About

John Brockman (*1941) is an US literary agent and writer specialised in arts and sciences. He can also be seen as an archetype of a networker, with a focus on the American and international scene of art, science, media and culture.

John Brockman
Santa Fé
(Katinka Matson, 1997)

After attending the Babson Institute of Business Administration at the Columbia University, Brockman was a multimedia artist in the 1960's before founding Brockman, Inc. in 1974, a company for marketing, publicising and cultivating prominent scientists of all specialities who want to popularise their thoughts on their subjects.

Probably best known for

John Brockman is known as a devoted dinner host (hosting the once called Millionaires' Dinner), bringing together the most sharp minds, as well for Edge, an Internet platform he provides for intellectual jam sessions.

Why I think he's interesting

He propagated the term Third Culture in his book of the same name. It's a reference to Charles Percy Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959); Snow described the gap between two cultures, the literary intellectuals on the one hand and the science intellectuals on the other. He (Snow) diagnosed the one-sided curricula of the universities as the cause, leading to a cultural depletion on both sides. In 1963, Snow predicted in The Two Cultures: A Second Look an evolution of a third culture: a new generation of scientists that would bridge the communication gap between these two traditional cultures.

Brockman denied Snow's optimistic attitude towards an effective communication between those two cultures happening in near future. Instead, he proclaimed the current scientific movement of popular science publications that try to give answers to the “last questions” to the broader audience to already be the Third Culture.

The idea of the Third Culture has been picked up in Europe, too, for example in Germany by the Frankfuter Allgemeine Zeitung by opening their feuilleton to scientists. Also, Gábor Paál drew comparisons to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Realphilosophie in his novel Was ist schön? – Ästhetik und Erkenntnis.

John Brockman carries on the Third Culture on Edge subsequent to his book, where scientists communicate their ideas in easy terms.

What do you think of the Third Culture?