The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind

Laughlin, Robert B.

ISBN 10: 0465020283 / ISBN 13: 9780465020287

Published by Basic Books, 2010

About this Item

A Nobel Laureate physicist argues that ours is not an age of information but an age of disinformation and ignorance, where access to knowledge is becoming increasingly restricted and even criminalized. Num Pages: 192 pages. BIC Classification: 1KBB; JPVH2. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 203 x 133 x 6. Weight in Grams: 208. . 2010. Reprint. paperback. . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780465020287

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465020283
• ISBN 13: 9780465020287
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

We all agree that the free flow of ideas is essential to creativity. And we like to believe that in our modern, technological world, information is more freely available and flows faster than ever before. But according to Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin, acquiring information is becoming a danger or even a crime. Increasingly, the really valuable information is private property or a state secret, with the result that it is now easy for a flash of insight, entirely innocently, to infringe a patent or threaten national security. The public pays little attention because this vital information is "technical" -- but, Laughlin argues, information is often labeled technical so it can be sequestered, not sequestered because it's technical. The increasing restrictions on information in such fields as cryptography, biotechnology, and computer software design are creating a new Dark Age: a time characterized not by light and truth but by disinformation and ignorance. Thus we find ourselves dealing more and more with the Crime of Reason, the antisocial and sometimes outright illegal nature of certain intellectual activities.

The Crime of Reason is a reader-friendly jeremiad, On Bullshit for the Slashdot and Creative Commons crowd: a short, fiercely argued essay on a problem of increasing concern to people at the frontiers of new ideas.

About the Author

Robert B. Laughlin is the Robert M. and Anne Bass Professor of Physics at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1985. In 1998 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the fractional quantum Hall effect. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He lives in Palo Alto, California.