by
on
From the Cover of the book
Full contents list
| Pt | Ch | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Brockman | Introduction | |||
| 1 | The EVOLUTIONARY IDEA | |||
| 1 | George C. Williams | A package of Information | ||
| 2 | Stephen Jay Gould | The Pattern of Life's History | ||
| 3 | Richard Dawkins (feature) | A Survival Machine | ||
| 4 | Brian Goodwin | Biology is Just a Dance | ||
| 5 | Steve Jones | Why Is There So Much Genetic Diversity? | ||
| 6 | Niles Eldridge | A Battle of Words | ||
| 7 | Lynn Margulis | Gaia is a Tough Bitch | ||
| 2 | A COLLECTION of KLUDGES | |||
| 8 | Marvin Minksy | Smart Machines | ||
| 9 | Roger Schank | Information is Surprises | ||
| 10 | Daniel C. Dennet | Intuition Pumps | ||
| 11 | Nicholas Humphrey | The Thick Moment | ||
| 12 | Francisco Varela | The Emergent Self | ||
| 13 | Steven Pinker (at edge) | Language is a Human Instinct | ||
| 14 | Roger Penrose | Consciousness Involves Noncomputable Ingredients | ||
| 3 | QUESTIONS of ORIGINS | |||
| 15 | Martin Rees | An Ensemble of Universes | ||
| 16 | Alan Guth | A Universe in Your Backyard | ||
| 17 | Lee Smolin | A Theory of The Whole Universe | ||
| 18 | Paul Davies | The Synthetic Path | ||
| 4 | What was DARWIN'S ALGORITHM? | |||
| 19 | Murray Gell-Mann | Plectics | ||
| 20 | Stuart Kauffman | Order for Free | ||
| 21 | Christopher G. Langton | A Dynamical Pattern | ||
| 22 | J. Doyne Farmer | The Second Law of Organisation | ||
| 5 | SOMETHING that GOES BEYOND OURSELVES | |||
| 23 | W. Daniel Hillis | Close to the Singularity | ||
This book is the result of interviews with a collection of authors of popular scientific books. Brockman has edited himself out of the interviews so that they are presented as monologues, but he has edited in after each monologue comments by the other authors in the collection.
The result is very readable and interesting.
Brockman also presents his own little story in the introduction (which explains the title). This is along the lines that these literate scientists are the people to read rather than the boring old literary intellectuals who have hitherto dominated the media. The title is suggesting that these people are neither of C.P.Snow's two cultures but a third, a new intelligentsia who have all the interesting new ideas.
Sounds all rather elitist to me, but it is the most interesting book I read in 1996.
See also:
|
Review of "The Third Culture" By Steve Fuller, from a sociologists point of view. |
|
Digerati Electing the Cyber-Elite, putting them on pedestals, and gawping in wonder. |
|
The THIRD CULTURE collection Another version of "the third culture"?. |
©
created 1996/12/30 modified 1997/2/2