Great Minds Don’t Think Alike

Does technology change who we are, and if so, in what ways? Can humanity transcend physical bodies and spaces? Will AI and genetic engineering help us reach new heights or will they unleash dystopias? How do we face mortality, our own and that of our warming planet? Questions like these—which are only growing more urgent—can be answered only by drawing on different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing. They challenge us to bridge the divide between the sciences and the humanities and bring together perspectives that are too often kept apart.

Great Minds Don’t Think Alike presents conversations among leading scientists, philosophers, historians, and public intellectuals that exemplify openness to diverse viewpoints and the productive exchange of ideas. Pulitzer and Templeton Prize winners, MacArthur “genius” grant awardees, and other acclaimed writers and thinkers debate the big questions: who we are, the nature of reality, science and religion, consciousness and materialism, and the mysteries of time. In so doing, they also inquire into how uniting experts from different areas of study to consider these topics might help us address the existential risks we face today. Convened and moderated by the physicist and author Marcelo Gleiser, these public dialogues model constructive engagement between the sciences and the humanities—and show why intellectual cooperation is necessary to shape our collective future.

Contributors include David Chalmers and Antonio Damasio; Sean Carroll and B. Alan Wallace; Patricia Churchland and Jill Tarter; Rebecca Goldstein and Alan Lightman; Jimena Canales and Paul Davies; Ed Boyden and Mark O’Connell; Elizabeth Kolbert and Siddhartha Mukherjee; Jeremy DeSilva, David Grinspoon, and Tasneem Zehra Husain.

Introduction
The Dialogues
1.The Mystery of Consciousness: A Dialogue Between a Neuroscientist and a Philosopher, by David Chalmers and Antonio Damasio
2. The Nature of Reality: A Dialogue Between a Buddhist Scholar and a Theoretical Physicist, by Sean Carroll and B. Alan Wallace
3. Future of Intelligence: Human, Machine, and Extraterrestrial: A Dialogue Between an Astronomer and a Philosopher, by Patricia Churchland and Jill Tarter
4. The Nature of Spirituality: A Dialogue on Science and Religion, by Rebecca Goldstein and Alan Lightman
5. The Mystery of Time: A Dialogue Between a Science Historian and a Physicist, by Jimena Canales and Paul Davies
6. Cyborgs, Futurists, and Transhumanism: A Dialogue Between a Neuroscientist and an Author, by Ed Boyden and Mark O’Connell
7. On Human and Planetary Longevity: A Dialogue Between an Environmentalist and a Doctor, by Elizabeth Kolbert and Siddhartha Mukherjee
8. On Being Human: A Dialogue on Literary and Scientific Perspectives, by Jeremy DeSilva, David Grinspoon, and Tasneem Zehra Husain
Where Do We Go from Here?
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index