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 that science has changed the intellectual landscape.Brockman's thesis that science is emerging as the intellectual center of our society is brought to life vividly in "The Third Culture, " which weaves together the voices of some of today's most influential scientific figures, including: Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins on the implications of evolution Steven Pinker, Marvin Minsky, Daniel C. Dennett, and Roger Penrose on how the mind worksMurray Gell-Mann and Stuart Kauffman on the new sciences of complexity"The Third Culture" is an honest picture of science in action. It is at once stimulating, challenging, and riveting.

A look at what science might, and might not, be able to do for us in the first half of the 21st century. A team of experts address the future in theory and in practice as well as examining the social and political ramifications of the strange new world to come.

Future Imperfect describes and discusses a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, and radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work and play. We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now.

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This fragment of verse by the Greek poet Archilochus describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Tolstoy, in which he underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all embracing system. Tolstoy longed for a unitary vision, Sir Isaiah observes, but his marvelous perception of people, things, and the moments of history was so acute that he could not stop himself from writing as he saw, felt, and understood. He was by nature a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog. Since its first publication in 1953 Sir Isaiah's long essay has acquired the status of a small masterpiece. In its distillation of his profound knowledge of Russian thought and more general political philosophy, The Hedgehog and the Fox is a triumph of erudition and a superb entryway into an understanding of Tolstoy's work. "This little book is so entertaining, as well as acute, that the reader hardly notices that it is learned too." Arnold Toynbee.

This is an extraordinary and challenging synthesis of ideas uniting Quantum Theory, and the theories of Computation, Knowledge and Evolution. Deutsch's extraordinary book explores the deep connections between these strands which reveal the fabric of reality in which human actions and ideas play essential roles.

This book is based on an interdisciplinary course on logic offered to upper-level undergraduates at Duke University over a period of more than ten years. Why an interdisciplinary course on logic? Although logic has been a discipline of study in philosophy since ancient times, in recent decades it has played an important role in other disciplines as well. For example, logic is at the core of two programming languages, is used in program verification, has enriched philosophy (and computer science) with non-classical logics that can deal constructively with contradictions, and has shaken the foundations of mathematics with insight into non-computable functions and non-provability. Several of these ideas are treated in this book.
This book addresses select topics drawn from three different areas of logic: proof theory, computability theory, and philosophical logic. A common thread throughout is the application of logic to computers and computation.
Part 1 on Proof Theory introduces a deductive system (resolution logic) that comes from an area of research known as automated deduc- tion.
Part 2 on Computability Theory explores the limits of computation using an abstract model of computers called register machines.
Part 3 on Philosophical Logic presents a certain non-classical logic (relevance logic) and a semantics for it that is useful for automated reasoning systems that must deal with the possibility of inconsistent information.
The three areas from which the special topics are drawn — proof theory, computability theory, and philosophical logic — exhibit the different roles that logic plays in three different disciplines: computer science, mathematics, and philosophy. The three parts of the book were written by a computer scientist, a mathematician, and a philosopher, respectively, and each part was reviewed by the other two authors for accessibility to students in their fields. The three parts of the book are roughly of equal length. The second part, on computability theory, is largely independent of the first, but the third part, on philosophical logic, is best presented after the first two parts.

Proofs and Refutations is essential reading for all those interested in the methodology, the philosophy and the history of mathematics. Much of the book takes the form of a discussion between a teacher and his students. They propose various solutions to some mathematical problems and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these solutions. Their discussion (which mirrors certain real developments in the history of mathematics) raises some philosophical problems and some problems about the nature of mathematical discovery or creativity. Imre Lakatos is concerned throughout to combat the classical picture of mathematical development as a steady accumulation of established truths. He shows that mathematics grows instead through a richer, more dramatic process of the successive improvement of creative hypotheses by attempts to 'prove' them and by criticism of these attempts: the logic of proofs and refutations.

This is a new translation of and commentary on Pico della Mirandola's most famous work, the Oration on the Dignity of Man. It is the first English edition to provide readers with substantial notes on the text, essays that address the work's historical, philosophical and theological context, and a survey of its reception. Often called the 'Manifesto of the Renaissance', this brief but complex text was originally composed in 1486 as the inaugural speech for an assembly of intellectuals, which could have produced one of the most exhaustive metaphysical, theological and psychological debates in history, had Pope Innocent VIII not forbidden it. This edition of the Oration reflects the spirit of the original text in bringing together experts in different fields. Not unlike the debate Pico optimistically anticipated, the resulting work is superior to the sum of its parts.

Capitalism has never been a subject for economists alone. Philosophers, politicians, poets and social scientists have debated the cultural, moral, and political effects of capitalism for centuries, and their claims have been many and diverse. The Mind and the Market is a remarkable history of how the idea of capitalism has developed in Western thought.
Ranging across an ideological spectrum that includes Hobbes, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Hegel, Marx, and Matthew Arnold, as well as twentieth-century communist, fascist, and neoliberal intellectuals, historian Jerry Muller examines a fascinating thread of ideas about the ramifications of capitalism and its future implications. This is an engaging and accessible history of ideas that reverberate throughout everyday life.

Mathieu Marion offers a careful, historically informed study of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. This area of his work has frequently been undervalued by Wittgenstein specialists and by philosophers of mathematics alike; but the surprising fact that he wrote more on this subject than on any other indicates its centrality in his thought. Marion traces the development of Wittgenstein's thinking in the context of the mathematical and philosophical work of the times, to make coherent sense of ideas that have too often been misunderstood because they have been presented in a disjointed and incomplete way. In particular, he illuminates the work of the neglected 'transitional period' between the Tractatus and the Investigations. Marion shows that study of Wittgenstein's writings on mathematics is essential to a proper understanding of his philosophy; and he also demonstrates that it has much to contribute to current debates about the foundations of mathematics.