At this time when one major natural disaster after another has been happening in various parts of the world, the air is rife with speculation on what’s to befall the planet and humanity next. Will there be another highly destructive earthquake and tsunami like the one that recently hit the northeastern coast of Japan? Will there be another nuclear crisis like the one that struck the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant? If so, when and where will these natural disasters happen? Setting aside the usual doomsday predictions of wild-eyed religious fanatics, what has science and logical thinking taught us about the probability of these natural disasters happening in our very own midst? Indeed, with all the experiential data that science has gathered over the centuries, can these natural disasters be predicted with at least a fairly reasonable degree of accuracy?
Left to right: TYPHOON YOLANDA (HAIYAN) AND STORM-SURGE DEVASTATION, TACLOBAN CITY, PHILIPPINES,
2013; EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DEVASTATION, SENDAI CITY, JAPAN, 2011
In “When We Cannot Predict,” a symposium organized by Edge.org, a website devoted to discussions of cutting-edge science, 12 leading scientists, academics, and professional thinkers share their views about natural cataclysms, the probability of their happening, and the grave risks they bring to our life and well-being. The contributors to the symposium are Bruce Parker, physical oceanographer; Kevin Kelly, editor-at-large of the technology magazine
Wired; Mary Catherine Bateson, cultural anthropologist and writer; Douglas Kenrick, psychology professor; Douglas Rushkoff, media analyst and documentary writer; Roger Schank, psychologist and computer scientist; Ed Regis, science writer and book author; Gregory Paul, independent science researcher and author; Eiko Ikegami, sociology professor; Rodney Brooks, emeritus professor of robotics; J. Doyne Farmer, chaos theory pioneer; and James J. O'Donnell, classicist and book author.
An intelligent synthesis of their views can help assuage our fear of natural disasters and minimize the risk when we are confronted by the unforeseeable.
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