What We Cannot Know. Marcus du Sautoy
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4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
This 4th Estate paperback edition 2017
Copyright © Marcus du Sautoy 2016
Cover design © Jonathan Pelham
The right of Marcus du Sautoy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007576593
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007576579
Version: 2019-11-29
To my parents, who started me on my journey to the edges of knowledge
CONTENTS
Copyright
Dedication
Edge Zero: The Known Unknowns
First Edge: The Casino Dice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Second Edge: The Cello
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Third Edge: The Pot of Uranium
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Fourth Edge: The Cut-Out Universe
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Fifth Edge: The Wristwatch
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Sixth Edge: The Chatbot App
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Seventh Edge: The Christmas Cracker
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Further Reading
Index
Acknowledgements
Illustration Credits
Also by Marcus du Sautoy
About the Publisher
Everyone by nature desires to know.
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Science is king.
Every week, headlines announce new breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe, new technologies that will transform our environment, new medical advances that will extend our lives. Science is giving us unprecedented insights into some of the big questions that have challenged humanity ever since we’ve been able to formulate those questions. Where did we come from? What is the ultimate destiny of the universe? What are the building blocks of the physical world? How does a collection of cells become conscious?
In the last ten years alone we’ve landed a spaceship on a comet, made robots that can create their own language, used stem cells to repair the pancreas of diabetic patients, discovered how to use the power of thought alone to manipulate a robotic arm, sequenced the DNA of a 50,000-year-old cave girl. Science magazines are bursting with the latest breakthroughs emerging from the world’s laboratories. We know so much. The advances of science are extremely intoxicating.
Science has given us our best weapon in our fight against fate. Instead of giving in to the ravages of disease and natural disaster, science has created vaccines to combat deadly viruses like polio and even ebola. Faced with an escalating world population, it is scientific advances that provide the best hope of feeding the 9.6 billion people who are projected to be alive in 2050. It is science that is warning us about the deadly impact we are having on our environment and giving us the chance to do something about it before it is too late. An asteroid might have wiped out the dinosaurs, but the science that humans have developed is our best shield against any future direct hits. In the human race’s constant battle with death, science is its best ally.
Science is king not only when it comes to our fight for survival but also in improving our quality of life. We are able to communicate with friends and family across vast distances. We have unparalleled access to the database of knowledge we have accumulated over generations of investigation. We have created virtual worlds that we can escape to in our leisure time. We can recreate in our living rooms the great performances of Mozart, Miles and Metallica at the press of a button.
That desire to know is programmed into the human psyche. Those early humans with a thirst for knowledge are those who have survived, adapted, transformed their environment. Those not driven by that craving were left behind. Evolution has favoured the mind that wants to know the secrets of how the universe works. The adrenaline rush that accompanies the discovery of new knowledge is nature’s way of telling us that the desire to know is as important as the drive to reproduce. As Aristotle articulated in the opening line of his book Metaphysics, understanding how the world works is a basic human need.
As a schoolkid, science very quickly drew me into its outstretched arms. I fell in love with its extraordinary power to tell us so much about the universe. The fantastic stories that my science teachers told seemed even more fanciful than the fiction I’d been reading at home.