And now! I am happy to announce the winners of our 2012 Essay Contest, "Questioning the Foundations: Which of Our Assumptions Are Wrong?"
Without further ado, here are the winners:
First prize of $10,000 goes to ...
Rob Spekkens, for his essay, The Paradigm of Kinematics and Dynamics Must Yield to Causal Structure.
Rob, a researcher at Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, asked whether we should reconsider the conventional dichotomy of "kinematic" and "dynamic".
Our Second Prize winners, who both receive $5,000, are ...
George Ellis and Steven Weinstein
George Ellis, from University of Cape Town in South Africa, asked in his essay, Recognising Top-Down Causation, whether nature might contain fundamental but complex structures that we cannot derive from more basic entities.
Steven Weinstein, from University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute, asked in Patterns in the Fabric of Nature whether what happens at one point in space is really independent from what happens at other points.
A further five essays received Third Prize, receiving $2,000 each (and a Membership invitation where applicable), and ten other essays received Fourth Prize and $1,000. Visit this link to view the full list of winners.
On behalf of all the FQXi administration, I want to thank our cosponsers -- The Peter & Patricia Gruber Foundation, and Submeta. And I also want to thank our media partner Scientific American.
And finally, all of us at FQXi want to say thank you to everyone who participated, including the authors of all 271 entries, who helped make this our biggest contest ever. Here's to the next contest!