There are things about the way a scientist looks at lab animals (including humans) and discoveries that I find truly frightening, and they're on full display in this book. Michio Kaku describes experiments with a wide-eyed emotional (and, I think, ethical) detachment and questionable future scenarios with an excited, happy dismissal of potential, probable negative ramifications. Yes, he does discuss ~ in passing (and, my guess is, at his editor's urging!) ~ the need for legislation and oversight, but in general, his attitude seems to be that scientists' role is to keep exploring no matter how and no matter where it takes us. In other words, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead; it's up to others to control the results. Maybe that's the way innovators should look at things. If they let their work be curtailed by thoughts of conceivable injurious consequences, we would probably still be a wholly agrarian society. That said, I have to admit to moments of revulsion as I read Kaku's breathless, embracing visions and prognostications of a world leading up to the singularity.
Between shudders, I am finding enjoyable, informative, and inspirational passages like the following, from pages 132-133:
One might expect that Einstein's brain was far beyond an ordinary human's, that it must have been huge, perhaps with areas that were abnormally large. In fact, the opposite has been found (it is slightly smaller, not larger, than normal). Overall, Einstein's brain is quite ordinary. If a neurologist did not know that this was Einstein's brain, he probably would not give it a second thought.
The only differences found in Einstein's brain were rather minor. A certain part of his brain, called the angular gyri, was larger than normal, with the inferior parietal regions of both hemispheres 15 percent wider than average. Notably, these parts of the brain are involved in abstract thought, in the manipulation of symbols such as writing and mathematics, and in visual-spatial processing. But his brain was still within the norm, so it is not clear whether the genius of Einstein lay in the organic structure of his brain or
in the force of his personality, his outlook, and the times. In a biography that I once wrote of Einstein, titled Einstein's Cosmos, it was clear to me that certain features of his life were just as important as any anomaly in his brain. Perhaps Einstein himself said it best when he said, "I have no special talents. ... I am only passionately curious." In fact, Einstein would confess that he had to struggle with mathematics in his youth. To one group of schoolchildren, he once confided, "No matter what difficulties you may have with mathematics, mine were greater." So why was Einstein Einstein?
First, Einstein spent most of his time thinking via "thought experiments." He was a theoretical physicist, not an experimental one, so he was continually running sophisticated simulations of the future in his head. In other words, his laboratory was his mind.
Second, he was known to spend up to ten years or more on a single thought experiment. From the age of sixteen to twenty-six, he focused on the problem of light and whether it was possible to outrace a light beam. This led to the birth of special relativity, which eventually revealed the secret of the stars and gave us the atomic bomb. From the age of twenty-six to thirty-six, he focused on a theory of gravity, which eventually gave us black holes and the big-bang theory of the universe. And then from the age of thirty-six to the end of his life, he tried to find a theory of everything to unify all of physics. Clearly, the ability to spend ten or more years on a single problem showed the tenacity with which he would simulate experiments in his head.
Third, his personality was important. He was a bohemian, so it was natural for him to rebel against the establishment in physics. Not every physicist had the nerve or the imagination to challenge the prevailing theory of Isaac Newton, which had held sway for two hundred years before Einstein.
Fourth, the time was right for the emergence of an Einstein. In 1905, the old physical world of Newton was crumbling in light of experiments that clearly suggested a new physics was about to be born, waiting for a genius to show the way. For example, the mysterious substance called radium glowed in the dark all by itself indefinitely, as if energy was being created out of thin air, violating the theory of conservation of energy. In other words, Einstein was the right man for the times. If somehow it becomes possible to clone Einstein from the cells in his preserved brain, I suspect that the clone would not be the next Einstein. The historic circumstances must also be right to create a genius.
The point here is that genius is perhaps a combination of being born with certain mental abilities and also the determination and drive to achieve great things. The essence of Einstein's genius was probably his extraordinary ability to simulate the future through thought experiments, creating new physical principles via pictures. As Einstein himself once said, "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination." And to Einstein, imagination meant shattering the boundaries of the known and entering the domain of the unknown.
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