Jeff Wise

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Jeff Wise
Jeff Wise.jpg
Wise in 2016
NationalityAmerican
Education Harvard University
Occupation(s)Journalist and author
SpouseSandra Garcia
Website http://jeffwise.net

Jeff Wise is an American author and television journalist. His main topics are science, technology, aviation, and adventure.

Contents

He is the author of the book Extreme Fear and has had articles published in: Bloomberg Businessweek , The Huffington Post , Men's Health , Men's Journal , National Geographic Adventure , Nautilus , New York , The New York Times , Popular Mechanics , Psychology Today , Slate , Time , and Travel + Leisure .

Education

Jeff Wise graduated from Harvard with a degree in evolutionary biology. [1]

Career

Jeff Wise began his freelance writing career after graduating from college, at first focusing on travel and adventure. [1] In a 2010 podcast interview, he describes why he switched fields from biology to journalism:

“I wasn’t so interested in the test tube work or going out and spending five years investigating the life cycle of a barnacle, but the story of the life cycle of the barnacle can be absolutely fascinating. So, I was very happy to spend … a half an hour reading the paragraph (or whatever it may be) about the barnacle. But, I didn’t want to be the guy in the boat watching the barnacle.” [2] [3] :2:28

As of 2016, Jeff Wise has written one book and two shorter electronic-only publications:

Television

Jeff Wise has appeared as himself in several TV series and one TV movie, exploring and explaining science and history. His on-camera appearances [7] are:

He also produced the TV documentary:

Scientific views

Jeff Wise advocates scientific materialism and has explained in an interview with Alex Tsakiris in 2010, using Freud as an example, that a successful explanatory theory requires a mechanism:

“[A] scientific theory is something that tries to increase our understanding by making a prediction, by saying ‘Okay, we’re going to say that the earth orbits around the sun, therefore we would expect to see this motion of the planets,’ or something like that. I think the thing that's often overlooked is that the theory requires a mechanism. And I think this is why Freud ultimately I think was cast aside, because Freud had a lot of interesting ideas and suppositions about how the brain works, but he never offered any mechanisms." [8]

In the same interview, discussing the difference between science and popular, but non-scientific, ideas, Wise said:

“When you mention these guys who claim that they’ve found evidence that near-death experiences cannot be explained through materialistic explanations and so forth, it’s not that I’m afraid to look into it. But it doesn’t really fit into my schema for how I basically have come to conclude the world works. It’s not fear so much as it doesn’t really mesh into how I believe the world fundamentally works.” [8]

Personal life

Wise is married and has two sons. [4] [1] He is an amateur pilot and lives in New York City. [9]

Related Research Articles

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Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics. Starting with his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, his theories began to gain prominence.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "About the Author". Jeff Wise. Archived from the original on October 26, 2016. Retrieved March 5, 2017.
  2. "New York Academy of Sciences Podcast". The New York Academy of Sciences. The New York Academy of Sciences. February 19, 2010. Archived from the original (Podcast) on February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  3. "New York Academy of Sciences Podcast" (MP3). The New York Academy of Sciences. The New York Academy of Sciences. February 19, 2010. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  4. 1 2 Wise, Jeff (2009). Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger (Hardcover ed.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN   978-0230614390.
  5. Wise, Jeff (2015). The Plane That Wasn't There: Why We Haven't Found Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (Kindle Single ed.). The Yellow Cabin Press.
  6. Wise, Jeff (2015). Fatal Descent: Andreas Lubitz and the Crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 (Kindle Single ed.).
  7. 1 2 "Jeff Wise (IV)". IMDb. IMDb.com, Inc. Archived from the original on March 10, 2017. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  8. 1 2 Tsakiris, Alex (May 6, 2010). "103. Near-Death Experience Research — Do Science Journalists Get it Wrong?". Skeptiko. Archived from the original on March 16, 2016. Retrieved March 28, 2017.
  9. "Jeff Wise". Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC. Archived from the original on October 25, 2016. Retrieved March 28, 2017.