The Genius Who Never Existed
Short Stories from Science, History and Philosophy
The aim of the writings collected in this series is to present some key scientific events, ideas and personalities in the form of short stories that are easy and fun to read. Scientific and philosophical concepts are explained in a way that anyone may understand. Each story may be read separately, but at the same time, they all band together to form a wide-ranging introduction to the history of science and areas of contemporary scientific research, as well as some of the recurring problems science has encountered in history and the philosophical dilemmas it raises today.
CONTENTS
BRAIN
The man who could not forget 11
Willpower is a finite resource 16
How to raise a genius 21
The wisdom of psychopaths 26
Nature gave us four kinds of happiness 31
The marshmallow experiment 36
Thinking, fast and slow 40
The organ for happiness 45
Can animals think? 50
Pushing the limits of free will 55
The biology of self-control and instinctive willpower 60
The social brain 65
The brain: detective on the trail of a serial killer 70
NUMBERS
The genius who never existed 77
The man who proved that not everything could be proven 80
The mysterious disappearance of Ettore Majorana 85
Scientists on vacation 90
The birth of electromagnetism 95
The universe as a quantum computer 100
Calculating the weather 104
LIFE
Thank you for not following our recommendations 111
The rocky road to finding a cure for cholesterol 116
Cell police 121
The study of digestion through a hole in the stomach 125
How a surfer won the Nobel Prize 129
The Neanderthal genome project 134
The first intensive care unit 139
SOCIETY
Three stages of revolt 149
The wisdom of crowds 154
What money can't buy 159
The Stanford prison experiment and the Lucifer effect 164
Why is one environment more creative than another? 169
The equation that almost destroyed capitalism 174
Autocorrect 179
HISTORY
An ancient poem explaining the nature of things 185
David Hume – the Newton of moral sciences 189
The artillery of heaven and the heretical rod 194
A meeting of two minds – one admired, the other feared 199
The magnificence of Chinese science revealed 204
The “traitorous eight” make it on their own 209
Babies, between Kant and the Molluscs 214