Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.
Third Thoughts  By  cover art

Third Thoughts

By: Steven Weinberg
Narrated by: John Lescault
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.56

Buy for $15.56

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

A wise, personal, and wide-ranging meditation on science and society by the Nobel Prize-winning author of To Explain the World.

For more than four decades, one of the most captivating and celebrated science communicators of our time has challenged the public to think carefully about the foundations of nature and the inseparable entanglement of science and society. In Third Thoughts, Steven Weinberg casts a wide net: from the cosmological to the personal, from astronomy, quantum mechanics, and the history of science to the limitations of current knowledge, the art of discovery, and the rewards of getting things wrong.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and author of the classic The First Three Minutes, Weinberg shares his views on some of the most fundamental and fascinating aspects of physics and the universe. But he does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls or shy away from politics, taking on what he sees as the folly of manned spaceflight, the harms of inequality, and the importance of public goods. His point of view is rationalist, realist, reductionist, and devoutly secularist.

Weinberg is that great rarity, a prize-winning physicist who is entertaining and accessible. The essays in Third Thoughts, some of which appear here for the first time, will engage, provoke, and inform - and never lose sight of the human dimension of scientific discovery and its consequences for our endless drive to probe the workings of the cosmos.

©2018 Steven Weinberg (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about Third Thoughts

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    75
  • 4 Stars
    45
  • 3 Stars
    19
  • 2 Stars
    8
  • 1 Stars
    3
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    66
  • 4 Stars
    46
  • 3 Stars
    12
  • 2 Stars
    6
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    70
  • 4 Stars
    33
  • 3 Stars
    20
  • 2 Stars
    5
  • 1 Stars
    3

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A worthwhile book

Irrespective of whether you agree with his ideas, Steven Weinberg conveys in this compilation of articles fetching points of view about the history of science, state-of-the-art physics and cosmology, metaphysics, or public matters. Pieces about the standard model of particle physics might turn out to be challenging for the average reader.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great!

a fantastic piece of work & analysis of many essential issues! There's no BS science. There's no condescending tone. Very recondite subject matters are clearly explained!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Not what I expected

I was expecting scientific insight. I got sour grapes by an academic dunderhead who doesn’t accept that manned space flight is the primary emotional foundation for all federal spending on science.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Dull and Uninspired

Essays that remind me of my high school physics teacher... the dullest instructor in history.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

No need to have a PhD in physics.

Extremely well written and very well read. Mister Weinberg succeeds in making the abstract counter intuitive ideas behind quantum physics a good deal clearer, at least to someone with my limited intelligence.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars
  • B
  • 12-08-22

Dull, wandering, repetitive

Weinberg seems to have earned his reputation as an ego driven theorist. Though I largely don’t disagree with his views, there doesn’t seem to be a point to this book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful