Evolutionary science lies at the heart of a modern understanding of the natural world. Darwin’s theory has withstood 150 years of scientific scrutiny, and today it not only explains the origin and design of living things, but highlights the importance of a scientific understanding in our culture and in our lives. Recently the movement known as “Intelligent Design” has attracted the attention of journalists, educators, and legislators. The scientific community is puzzled and saddened by this trend–not only because it distorts (...) modern biology, but also because it diverts people from the truly fascinating ideas emerging from the real science of evolution. INTELLIGENT THOUGHT features fifteen of our preeminent thinkers whose clear, accessible, and passionate essays reveal the fact and power of Darwin’s theory, and the beauty of the scientific quest to understand our world. (shrink)

"Don't believe any of this. Place no value in the book, in the author. Give it up, the idea of author, of truth. Give up all believe: believe only in yourself. You: you are nothing but my experience. Me: I don't. I don't believe any of this." —John Brockman.

The Reality Club is an informal group of adventurous intellectuals whose by-invitation-only membership roster reads like a Who's Who of American arts, science, politics, and business—particle physicist Gerald Feinberg, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, linguist Vitaly Shevoroshkin, cyberneticist and video artist Paul Ryan. Theirs are the cutting-edge minds of our time, whose ideas are creating the reality of tomorrow. The Reality Club has been meeting once or twice a month, in private sessions in New York City, since 1981. Now it's going (...) public in a series of thematic books, of which WAYS OF KNOWING—thirteen provocative essays on the theme of how we learn, think, and process information—is the third volume. Like its predecessors, SPECULATIONS and DOING SCIENCE, it is required reading for anyone who appreciates the life of the mind, the unflinching search for truth, and reading for sheer intellectual pleasure. (shrink)