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.

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. 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. 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. 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. Something that goes beyond ourselves. Close to the singularity / W. Daniel Hillis.