[Keith_McClary]

THE 2014 EDGE QUESTION . . .
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Science advances by discovering new things and developing new ideas. Few truly new ideas are developed without abandoning old ones first. As theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) noted, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." In other words, science advances by a series of funerals. Why wait that long?

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?

Ideas change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?
http://www.edge.org/annual-question/wha ... retirement

174 essays; 128,000 words by Andrei Linde, Nina Jablonski, Anton Zeilinger, Julia Clarke, Martin Rees, Seirian Sumner, Fiery Cushman, Laurie Santos & Tamar Gendler, Jay Rosen, Alan Guth, Robert Sapolsky, Andrian Kreye, David Berreby, Dean Ornish, Benjamin Bergen, Eric Weinstein, Kai Krause, Gary Marcus, Amanda Gefter, Paul Saffo, Ian Gold & Joel Gold, Dimitar Sasselov, Jamil Zaki, Scott Sampson, Susan Fiske, Alexander Wissner-Gross, Kate Jeffery, Tor Nørretranders, Kiley Hamlin, Oliver Scott Curry, Bruce Parker, Brian Christian, Kate Mills, Athena Vouloumanos, June Gruber, Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran, N.J. Enfield, Kathryn Clancy, Eldar Shafir, Ross Anderson, Ian Bogost, Simon Baron-Cohen, Bart Kosko, Tom Griffiths, Sarah Demers, Stephen Stich, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Roger Highfield, Todd Sacktor, Victoria Wyatt, Ernst Pöppel, Gavin Schmidt, Bruce Hood, David Buss, Nigel Goldenfeld, Steve Giddings, Michael Norton, Catherine Bateson, Laurence Smith, Frank Tipler, Stephen Kosslyn, Brian Knutson, Robert Provine, Gerd Gigerenzer, Paul Bloom, Laura Betzig, Buddhini Samarasinghe, Kurt Gray, Daniel Goleman, Susan Blackmore, Alun Anderson, Martin Nowak, Marcelo Gleiser, David Deutsch, Donald Hoffman, Samuel Arbesman, Gregory Benford, Seth Lloyd, Nicholas Carr, Thomas Metzinger, Alex Holcombe, Leo Chalupa, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Stuart Pimm, Ed Regis, Giulio Boccaletti, Nicholas Christakis, W. Daniel Hillis, Michael McCullough, Gary Klein, Alex "Sandy" Pentland, Luca De Biase, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jonathan Gottschall, Azra Raza, M.D., Cesar Hidalgo, Aubrey de Grey, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Sherry Turkle, Scott Atran, Patricia Churchland, Gerald Smallberg, Peter Woit, Robert Kurzban, Charles Seife, David Myers, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Roger Schank, Paul Steinhardt, Peter Richerson, Helen Fisher, Abigail Marsh, Lisa Barrett, Irene Pepperberg, Adam Waytz, Andrew Lih, Steve Fuller, Stewart Brand, Gordon Kane, Andy Clark, Melanie Swan, Satyajit Das, Pascal Boyer, Richard Nisbett, Samuel Barondes, Jerry Coyne, Alan Alda, Paul Davies, Neil Gershenfeld, Dan Sperber, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Matt Ridley, Lee Smolin, Sam Harris, A.C. Grayling, Eric Topol, M.D., Timo Hannay, Ian McEwan, Alison Gopnik, Adam Alter, John McWhorter, Freeman Dyson, Emanuel Derman, Haim Harari, Jared Diamond, Carlo Rovelli, Jonathan Haidt, John Tooby, Max Tegmark, Richard Saul Wurman, Edward Slingerland, Christine Finn, Frank Wilczek, Victoria Stodden, Steven Pinker, Howard Gardner, David Gelernter, Rodney Brooks, Douglas Rushkoff, Hugo Mercier, Michael Shermer, Beatrice Golomb, Terrence Sejnowski, Sean Carroll, Daniel Everett, Margaret Levi, Richard Thaler, Tania Lombrozo, Daniel C. Dennett, Maria Spiropulu, Nicholas Humphrey, George Dyson, Kevin Kelly.

Some interesting thoughts here, relating to fundamental physics, genetics, psychology, scientific method, etc.
I was looking for relevance to resource depletion but didn't find much:

Economic Growth
Stationarity (two items with this title)
The Tragedy Of The Commons
Human Nature
Malthusianism
Homo Economicus

They have this all crammed onto one webpage
http://www.edge.org/responses/what-scie ... retirement
without any anchor links to the essays, so you will have to do a page search on the above titles.

[Loki]

I was looking for relevance to resource depletion but didn't find much:

Economic Growth
Stationarity (two items with this title)
The Tragedy Of The Commons
Human Nature
Malthusianism
Homo Economicus

Of that list, only the first and last I'd classify as pseudoscience, both perpetuated by economists, of course. Economic growth has been great as long as it's lasted, but to base an entire society on it is insanity. It would definitely be my first choice for concepts to toss into the rubbish bin of bad ideas.

"Malthusianism" is simply population dynamics applied to H. sapiens. It does seem to bother some folks that H. sapiens is just another animal species, but that can't be helped.

Tragedy of the commons is self-evident, as is "human nature." Unless one argues that there's a 50-50 chance a human baby will develop into a wombat vs. a human adult, there is obviously a genetically determined "human nature" (though with a wide spectrum of variance based on acculturation, local environment, and individual variability).