Third Millennium Thinking

Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense

Contributors

By Saul Perlmutter, PhD

By John Campbell, PhD

By Robert MacCoun, PhD

Formats and Prices

Price

$30.00

Price

$38.00 CAD

Based on a wildly popular UC Berkeley course, a primer on how to think critically, make sound decisions, and solve problems—individually and collectively—using scientists’ tricks of the trade.

In our deluge of information, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish the revelatory from the contradictory. How do we make health decisions in the face of conflicting medical advice? Does that article on GMOs even show what the authors claim? How can we navigate the next Thanksgiving discussion with our in-laws, who follow completely different experts on climate?
 
In Third Millennium Thinking, a physicist, a psychologist, and a philosopher introduce readers to the tools and frameworks that scientists use to keep from fooling themselves, to understand the world, and to make decisions. We can all borrow from these trust-building techniques that scientists have tested and developed for more than two millennia to tackle problems both big and small.
 
Readers will learn:
  • How to achieve a ground‑level understanding of the facts of the modern world
  • How to chart a course through a profusion of possibilities  
  • How to work together to take on the challenges we face today
  • And much more

Using provocative thought exercises, jargon-free language, and vivid illustrations drawn from history, daily life, and scientists’ insider stories, Third Millennium Thinking offers a novel approach for readers to make sense of the nonsense.

Genre:

On Sale
Jan 2, 2024
Page Count
304 pages
Publisher
Little Brown Spark
ISBN-13
9780316438100

Saul Perlmutter, PhD

About the Author

Saul Perlmutter is a 2011 Nobel Laureate, sharing the prize in physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. He is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In addition to other awards and honors, he is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts, and the American Philosophical Society.  Perlmutter has written popular articles, and appeared in documentaries for PBS, Discovery Channel, and the BBC.
  
John Campbell is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and served as President of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology. He is the former Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy at the University of Oxford, Professorial Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and British Academy Research Reader. Campbell was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 2017.
 
Robert MacCoun is a social psychologist and public policy analyst who is currently a professor of law at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He served as a staff member at the Institute for Civil Justice and the Drug Policy Research Center and a faculty member of the Graduate School of Policy Studies at the RAND Corporation. In 2019, MacCoun received the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award of the Association for Psychological Science.

Learn more about this author