thedailychannel.com — recommended books

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution
by John Brockman

A funny thing happened when I stopped by a local college bookstore not too long ago. I had hoped to get a glimpse of some of the software titles, just to see what kind of information tools students were using, or more to the point, getting ready to build these days.

However, nowhere was a software section to be found. This was kind of surprising, and after reading the introduction to this collection of essays by 23 practicing scientists (which I did find), I think maybe I'm on the road to a reason for the apparent insularity.

The gist of the idea is that although the literary and political intelligentsia think that scientists are poorly educated because they don't know the classics, they don't consider themselves relatively uneducated because they are entirely unacquainted with today's science.

I realized I had fallen prey to the same basic outlook by presenting primarily non-technical books on this website. I do read huge amounts of writing about software development, web design, and popular science, but seldom post reviews of scientific or technical books on this site because I had assumed they were not of general interest.

From now on, though I'll be including reviews of all the books I read, technical & scientific as well as those in the humanities and the arts.

I think it fits in better with the readership of this site anyway, which seems to be more participatory and content-creating rather than just straight consumers of mass media output.

Only a few pages, and this book has already changed my outlook. Not all the reviews are completely favorable, but I think a scientific excursion to www.amazon.com is called for, to pick up a copy of The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution by John Brockman

Reviewed Feb 5, 2002