Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong? ***

I am deeply interested in the question that Klosterman discusses in this book: What if some of our "deeply engrained cultural and scientific beliefs" turn out to be false? For example, in the introduction he quotes the physicist Brian Greene:

There is a very, very good chance that our understanding of gravity will not be the same in five hundred years.

Unfortunately (from my perspective), Klosterman spends more time pondering our cultural future than our scientific one. What authors and musicians will people remember five hundred years from now, and based on what critical principles? It's an interesting thought experiment, but the fact that our aesthetic judgments change over time is not surprising. The fact that future humans might declare a currently obscure artist to be the most important of our era is not as mind-blowing as the idea that we might completely misunderstand the laws of physics.

In fact, Klosterman largely denies the possibility that our current scientific beliefs could be fundamentally wrong. The scientific method, mathematization, and the pure utility of our knowledge argue against it. But I think this answer misses the point. I don't doubt that the equations governing gravity or quantum mechanics are fundamentally right, but I do doubt that our conceptual understanding of the underlying system is correct. I'm sure that's what Brian Greene means in the quote above.

My favorite chapter turns out to be about the future of American football. It shows subtle insight into the operation of culture.