Five Good Questions: Samuel Arbesman – The Half-Life of Facts

Updated on


Samuel Arbesman, author, The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date, is a complex systems scientist and writer, whose work focuses on the nature of scientific and technological change. He is currently a Senior Adjunct Fellow of the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and a Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation. He lives in Kansas City with his wife.

Five Good Questions: Samuel Arbesman – The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

Samuel Arbesman – The Half-Life of Facts: Description

Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing.

Samuel Arbesman shows us how knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and how this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives.

He takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries.

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date by Samuel Arbesman

Leave a Comment