The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [203]
38. Stephen Hawking, “Quantum Cosmology,” in Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 89–90.
39. Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (New York: Knopf, 2005), 726–32, 762–65.
40. Stephen Hawking, “The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology: Stephen Hawking 60th Birthday Symposium” (lecture at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, U.K., January 11, 2002).
41. Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). See also Quentin Smith, “A Natural Explanation of the Existence and Laws of Our Universe,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (1990): 22–43. For an elegant summary see James Gardner, Biocosm (Maui, Hi.: Inner Ocean Publishing, 2003).
42. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam Books, 2010), 6–9, 46, 75, 83, 136, 179–80.
Epilogue: The Truth Is Out There
1. Thanks to Arthur Benjamin, professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and the famous mathemagician, for this calculation. Art recommends this Web page for such calculations (where N = 52 and p = 0.5): http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~west/applets/binomialdemo.html.
2. “Lennart Green Does Close-up Card Magic,” TED, February 2005, http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/lennart_green_does_close_up_card_magic.html.
3. Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 336.
4. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).
5. Jared Diamond, Natural Experiments of History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 120–29.
6. To the stars with difficulty. Sometimes rendered Per aspera ad astra. The phrase originated with the Roman poet Seneca the Younger and was made famous on a plaque honoring the Apollo 1 astronauts who perished in a fire on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral.
Acknowledgments
The construction of a book is not unlike that of a building, in which the reading public sees only the finished edifice after the scaffolding is taken down and the construction crews have moved on to other projects. The foundation and assembly of this book—along with my work in general—were aided by a number of individuals, starting with my agents, Katinka Matson, John Brockman, and Max Brockman, who together continue to help shape the genre of science writing into what I call integrative science, which integrates data, theory, and narrative into a unified whole. And to my lecture agent, Scott Wolfman, and his ambitious team at Wolfman Productions, for having the foresight to market science and skepticism as a viable form of entertainment and education. Thanks as well to Stephen Rubin, Paul Golob, and Robin Dennis at Henry Holt/Times Books, who oversaw the project, and especially to my general editor, Serena Jones, who disciplined me into tightening the manuscript, and to the remarkable copy editor, Michelle Daniel, who went through the manuscript line by line and thereby saved me much literary embarrassment with her many excellent suggestions. And recognition goes to the designer of the book, Meryl Sussman Levavi, whose typography, layout, and design elevated the book to elegance, and to Maggie Richards in sales and marketing and Nicole Dewey in publicity for bringing the manuscript to market, the final and in many ways the most important step in the ever-changing world of book publishing.
I also wish to recognize the office staff of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, including Pat Linse, Nicole McCullough, Ann Edwards, Daniel Loxton, William Bull, Jim Smith, Jerry Friedman, and Teresa LeVelle, as well as Senior Editor Frank Miele, Senior Scientists David Naiditch, Bernard Leikind, Liam McDaid, Claudio Maccone, and Thomas McDonough, contributing