What are scientists working on today? What do they worry about? What do they think about the working of the brain, climate change, animal experimentation, cancer, and mental illness? Is science progressing or in retreat? Is this century humankind's last?

These are just some of the compelling and provocative questions tackled here by twelve of the world's leading scientists and scientific thinkers. In engaging and lucid discussion, they clarify many of the most urgent scientific challenges and dilemmas facing science today.

Essential reading for anyone interested in popular science, What Scientists Think is edited and written by Jeremy Stangroom of the highly successful The Philosopher's Magazine and includes a foreword by Marek Kohn, author of A Reason for Everything: Natural Selection and the British Imagination.

• Book Cover 2
• Title 5
• Copyright 6
• Contents 7
• Foreword 8
• The Scientists 11
• Preface 15
• Introduction 17
• 1 Darwinism and Genes 24
• 2 Evolutionary Psychology and the Blank Slate 39
• 3 The Human Brain and Consciousness 53
• 4 Science and the Human Animal 67
• 5 Cybernetics and a Post-Human Future 82
• 6 Psychiatry and Schizophrenia 95
• 7 Microbiology, Viruses and Their Threats 113