The third culture / by John Brockman.
| Author/creator | Brockman, John, 1941- |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | New York : Simon & Schuster, ©1995. |
| Description | 413 pages ; 25 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | The evolutionary idea. A package of information / George C. Williams -- The pattern of life's history / Stephen Jay Gould -- A survival machine / Richard Dawkins -- Biology is just a dance / Brian Goodwin -- Why is there so much genetic diversity? / Steve Jones -- A battle of words / Niles Eldredge -- Gaia is a tough bitch / Lynn Margulis. |
| Contents | A collection of kludges. Smart machines / Marvin Minsky -- Information is surprises / Roger Schank -- Intuition pumps / Daniel C. Dennett -- The thick moment / Nicholas Humphrey -- The emergent self / Francisco Varela -- Language is a human instinct / Steven Pinker -- Consciousness involves noncomputable ingredients / Roger Penrose. |
| Contents | Questions of origins. An ensemble of universes / Martin Rees -- A universe in your backyard / Alan Guth -- A theory of the whole universe / Lee Smolin -- The synthetic path / Paul Davies. |
| Contents | What was Darwin's algorithm? Plectics / Murray Gell-Mann -- Order for free / Stuart Kauffman -- A dynamical pattern / Christopher G. Langton -- The second law of organization / J. Doyne Farmer. |
| Contents | Something that goes beyond ourselves. Close to the singularity / W. Daniel Hillis. |
| Abstract | The Third Culture is an eye-opening look at the intellectual culture of today - in which science, not literature or philosophy, takes center stage in the debate over human nature and the nature of the universe. Thirty-five years ago, C. P. Snow, in a now famous essay, wrote about the polarization of the "two cultures" - literary intellectuals on the one hand, and scientists on the other. Although he hoped for the emergence of a "third culture" that would bridge the gap, it is only recently - when books such as Daniel C. Dennett's Consciousness Explained, Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind, and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct became bestsellers - that science has changed the intellectual landscape. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (p. [389]-397) and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Brockman, John, 1941- Third culture. New York : Simon & Schuster, c1995 |
| LCCN | 95000083 |
| ISBN | 0684803593 |
| ISBN | 9780684803593 |