SIR JOHN MADDOX
SIR JOHN MADDOX studied physics and was chief-editor of the renomated science magazine Nature during 23 years. He was also member of a number of advisory Royal Commissions on environmental polution and genetic modification.
In 1995 he retired from Nature and started to finish his book ‘What remains to be Discovered’. It was an answer to the challenge his then 12-year old son Bruno had faced him with: As editor of science, you of all persons should be able to predict what will be discovered next.
Maddox made an inventory of all the weak spots and contradictions in science, convinced that those would be the places where new and deaper insights will emerge. It is Maddox’s firm belief that the whole of nature will eventually be not only researched and analysed but also understood.
At the moment (summer 2002) he works in the cellar of his old house in London on his book on the evolution of man.
BOOKS BY MADDOX:
The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (1962)
Revolution in Biology (1963)
The Doomsday Syndrome (1972)
Beyond the Energy Crisis (1974)
What remains to be Discovered (1998)
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– augustus 29, 2002
De Laatste Vraag (The Last Question)VPRO Noorderlicht / 24 min / 29-08-2002
In This final episode of the science series Noorderlicht explores the future of science. Are there any surprises left, or is science just about ready? A visualised debate between John Horgan (The End of Science 1996) and Sir John Maddox (What remains to be Discovered, 1998). Continued…
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– augustus 29, 2002
John Horgan
JOHN HORGAN is a freelance writer who wrote the book ‘The End of Science’. It was a bestseller in the USA and it was translated into 11 languages (including Dutch). Until the publication of his book, he worked during ten years as an editor for Scientific American. But his skeptikal view on science -which emerged from his book The End of Science- was not appreciated at the office and consequently Horgan was fired.
Since then Horgan writes from the cabin behind his house in the forests of the Hudson valley north of New York. He shares the house with his wife Suzie Gilbert (who writes children’s books and specialised in bird care), his children Mac and Skye and a varying number of birds with two parrots as permanent residents. In his cabin, he writes for the New York Times, Time, Washington Post, Science and other magazines. But he likes writing books most, such as the one on mysticism he’s working on at the moment (summer 2002).
Horgan’s books are milestones in his personal development that leads him from reductionist science into mysterianism. At the end there’s mysterie, Horgan thinks. The beginning of the universe, beginning of life, consciousness.. These are all mysteries for ever out of reach of human understanding, in Horgan’s view at least.
BOOKS BY HORGAN
The End of Science (1996)
The Undiscoverd Mind (1999)
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– augustus 29, 2002
Klassestrijd (Classroom Battlefield )
VPRO Noorderlicht / 24 min / 18-04-2002
Teaching has become alsmost impossible in schools in poor neighbourhoods. Youngster’s attitudes vary from indifference to downright hostility towards school. In response, schools tighten up their regime and bolster disciplin. Is there any way out of this mutual enstranglement? Prof H. Jerome Freiberg (College of Education, University of Houston), thinks there is. Noorderlicht compares one of the schools were his program runs (called Consistency Management & Cooperative Disciplin (CMCD)) to a problem school in the Bijlmer (Amsterdam). Continued…
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– april 18, 2002
Top-Ei (Top Egg)
VPRO Noorderlicht / 24 min / 31-01-2002
No less then 75% of all the fertilisations do not end up as babies. In the hope of increasing the chance of pregnancies in IVF-procedures, the fertility clinic of the Rotterdam Academic Hospital is looking for the very best embryo’s. They propose to do this by checking the embryo’s set of chromosomes before implanting it back to the womb. A discussion between Prof Bart Fauser (Rotterdam) and the genetic veterans Andre and Joelle Boue (Paris) Continued…
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– januari 31, 2002
Na-apen (Aping it)
VPRO Noorderlicht / 24 min / 15-11-2001
How do we learn? Psychology long concentrated on conditioning by means of reward or punishment, but ethologist Frans de Waal argues something else is more important. In his book The Ape and the Sushimaster, he focusses on social learning in primates and argues that in humans too social learning might be far more important then behaviourists might care to admit. Continued…
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– november 15, 2001
Werkterrein (Working Area)
VPRO Noorderlicht / 25 min / 11-10-2001
Last summer at an industrial area near the center of Amsterdam, archeologist Dr Jerzy Gawronksi dug up the dockyards of the VOC, the Dutch East Indian Company (1600 – 1800). Hunderdfifty years long, three to four vessels per year were built here. It was the Netherlands’ first industry, but it got trapped in the same medieval technology it had perfected, argues Dr Gawronski. Continued…
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– oktober 11, 2001
De Paniekfactor (The Panic Factor)
VPRO Noorderlicht / 25 min / 22-05-2001
Immediately after the pub fire in Volendam at New Year’s Eve 2001, an emergency door stood wide open while just across the room the young visitors were absolutely stuck before the entrance. How can emergency exits function so poorly? The Hungarian biological physicist Prof Tamas Vicsek made a mathematical model describing panic behaviour which might explain similar disasters.
This program was nominated as the best science program of 2001, an award it only just missed. Continued…
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– mei 22, 2001
Denken als Discipline (Thinking as a Discipline)
VPRO Noorderlicht / 25 min / 10-04-2001
Netherland’s most famous computing scientist, Professor Edsger W. Dijkstra (70), lives in Texas as a missionary priest between the natives. In his house, a grand piano takes the place of a TV set en his favourite wordprocessor is the fountain pen. And while all around him people hack code like crazy, Dijkstra preaches the need for correct and systematic programming. Continued…
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– april 10, 2001
Zeeteelt (Sea Farming)
VPRO Noorderlicht / 25 min / 20-02-2001
The seas are nearly emptied of fish. And now the fishery of cod is nearly finished, in Norway all hopes are set on the farming of it. Everywhere else in Europe the bio-industry is in trouble, but in Norway faith in controlling nature prevails. But can nature be controled? Continued…
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– februari 20, 2001
