BROADCASTS.com

b'

Why does your weather app say \\u201cThere\\u2019s a 10% chance of rain\\u201d instead of \\u201cIt will be sunny tomorrow\\u201d? In large part this is due to the insight of Tim Palmer, who made uncertainty essential to the study of weather and climate. Now he wants to apply it to how we study everything else.

In The Primacy of Doubt, Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers, or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution\\u2014one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don\\u2019t know.

Shermer and Palmer discuss: doubt and skepticism \\u2022 when doubt slides into denial \\u2022 uncertainty as a measurement problem vs. inherent in natural systems \\u2022 contingency and necessity, randomness and law \\u2022 the butterfly effect \\u2022 the geometry of chaos \\u2022 quantum uncertainty \\u2022 weather forecasting \\u2022 climate change \\u2022 pandemics \\u2022 economic recessions \\u2022 human decision making and creativity \\u2022 free will \\u2022 consciousness, and God.

Tim Palmer, FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) is a Royal Society Research Professor in the department of physics at the University of Oxford. He pioneered the development of operational ensemble weather and climate forecasting, and in 2007, he was formally recognized as having contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize. Palmer is a Commander of the British Empire, a fellow of the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Institute of Physics\\u2019 Dirac Gold Medal. He lives near Oxford, UK.