Marcus du Sautoy - What We Cannot Know

4th Estate

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London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016

This 4th Estate paperback edition 2017

Copyright © Marcus du Sautoy 2016

Cover design © Jonathan Pelham

The right of Marcus du Sautoy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007576593

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007576579

Version: 2019-11-29

To my parents, who started me on my journey to the edges of knowledge

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Edge Zero: The Known Unknowns

First Edge: The Casino Dice

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Second Edge: The Cello

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Third Edge: The Pot of Uranium

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Fourth Edge: The Cut-Out Universe

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Fifth Edge: The Wristwatch

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Sixth Edge: The Chatbot App

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Seventh Edge: The Christmas Cracker

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Further Reading

Index

Acknowledgements

Illustration Credits

Also by Marcus du Sautoy

About the Publisher

Everyone by nature desires to know.

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Science is king.

Every week, headlines announce new breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe, new technologies that will transform our environment, new medical advances that will extend our lives. Science is giving us unprecedented insights into some of the big questions that have challenged humanity ever since we’ve been able to formulate those questions. Where did we come from? What is the ultimate destiny of the universe? What are the building blocks of the physical world? How does a collection of cells become conscious?

In the last ten years alone we’ve landed a spaceship on a comet, made robots that can create their own language, used stem cells to repair the pancreas of diabetic patients, discovered how to use the power of thought alone to manipulate a robotic arm, sequenced the DNA of a 50,000-year-old cave girl. Science magazines are bursting with the latest breakthroughs emerging from the world’s laboratories. We know so much. The advances of science are extremely intoxicating.

Science has given us our best weapon in our fight against fate. Instead of giving in to the ravages of disease and natural disaster, science has created vaccines to combat deadly viruses like polio and even ebola. Faced with an escalating world population, it is scientific advances that provide the best hope of feeding the 9.6 billion people who are projected to be alive in 2050. It is science that is warning us about the deadly impact we are having on our environment and giving us the chance to do something about it before it is too late. An asteroid might have wiped out the dinosaurs, but the science that humans have developed is our best shield against any future direct hits. In the human race’s constant battle with death, science is its best ally.

Science is king not only when it comes to our fight for survival but also in improving our quality of life. We are able to communicate with friends and family across vast distances. We have unparalleled access to the database of knowledge we have accumulated over generations of investigation. We have created virtual worlds that we can escape to in our leisure time. We can recreate in our living rooms the great performances of Mozart, Miles and Metallica at the press of a button.

That desire to know is programmed into the human psyche. Those early humans with a thirst for knowledge are those who have survived, adapted, transformed their environment. Those not driven by that craving were left behind. Evolution has favoured the mind that wants to know the secrets of how the universe works. The adrenaline rush that accompanies the discovery of new knowledge is nature’s way of telling us that the desire to know is as important as the drive to reproduce. As Aristotle articulated in the opening line of his book Metaphysics , understanding how the world works is a basic human need.