Book picks similar to
Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: Search for Unity by Renee Weber
science
philosophy
ciencia
miscellaneous
The Mental Equivalent
Emmet Fox - 2006
How do you do it? You build in the mental equivalents by thinking quietly, constantly, and persistently of the kind of thing you want, and by thinking that has two qualities: clearness or definiteness, and interest. If you want to build anything into your life-if you want to bring health, right activity, your true place, inspiration; if you want to bring right companionship, and above all if you want understanding of God-form a mental equivalent of the thing which you want by thinking about it a great deal, by thinking clearly and with interest. Remember clarity and interest; those are the two poles. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.
The Unexpected Universe
Loren Eiseley - 1969
Scrupulous scholarship and magical prose are brought to bear on such diverse topics as seeds, the hieroglyphs on shells, lost tombs, the goddess Circe, city dumps, and Neanderthal man.
My Family and Other Animals
Frederic P. Miller - 2010
It describes the life of the Durrell Family on the island in a humorous manner, and also richly discusses the fauna of the island. It is the first and most famous of Durrell's Corfu trilogy, together with Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, and The Garden of the Gods. Durrell had already written several successful books about his trips collecting animals in the wild for zoos when My Family and Other Animals came out in 1956. Its comic exaggeration of the foibles of his family - especially his eldest brother Lawrence Durrell, who later became a famous novelist - and heartfelt appreciation of the natural world made it very successful. It launched Durrell's career as owner of the Jersey Zoological Park in the Channel Islands, as well as novel-writer and television personality; and was also influential in the development of tourism in Corfu. (Source: Wikipedia)
Mary's Message to the World
Annie Kirkwood - 1992
Reprint.
Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World
Lisa Randall - 2011
Featuring fascinating insights into our scientific future born from the author’s provocative conversations with Nate Silver, David Chang, and Scott Derrickson, Knocking on Heaven’s Door is eminently readable, one of the most important popular science books of this or any year. It is a necessary volume for all who admire the work of Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, Simon Singh, and Carl Sagan; for anyone curious about the workings and aims of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest and most expensive machine ever built by mankind; for those who firmly believe in the importance of science and rational thought; and for anyone interested in how the Universe began…and how it might ultimately end.
Wallace D. Wattles Premium Collection (9 Books): The Science of Getting Rich; The Science of Being Great; The Science of Being Well; A New Christ and many more
Wallace D. Wattles - 2014
Wallace Wattles, one of the father of motivation and success, whose work inspired "the secret", is now complete in one great volume of 9 BOOKS: — The Science of Getting Rich — The Science of Being Great — The Science of Being Well — How to Get What You Want — A New Christ — Jesus: The Man and his Work — Making the Man who can (How to Promote Yourself) — The New Science of Living and Healing — Hellfire Harrison (a novel)
The Biotech Century
Jeremy Rifkin - 1998
With living proof that such advancements are no longer the stuff of science fiction, a whole new world of possibilities--and dangers--presented itself. Jeremy Rifkin is more concerned with the dangers of this technology, and in The Biotech Century , he presents numerous compelling reasons why we should be, too. Many of these dangers revolve around the seemingly inevitable commercialization of genetically engineered life forms that would come if corporations battled for the rights to patents on new or modified species of plants, animals, or even human beings. Rifkin warns that "designer" babies and genetically perfect humans, along with any other artificial creations, would wreak havoc with the gene pool and the natural environment. While he concedes that there are benefits to biotechnology, he makes it clear that the risks far outweigh the rewards at this time, urging for greater restraint and responsibility before opening what could be a Pandora's box.
Of Leisure [De Otio]
Seneca
A dynamic table of contents enables to jump directly to the chapter selected. TABLE OF CONTENTS -01- ABOUT THIS BOOK -02- OF LEISURE -03- FOOTNOTE
The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions
David Berlinski - 2008
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated bestseller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement–one that now includes much of the scientific community.“The attack on traditional religious thought,” writes David Berlinski in The Devil’s Delusion, “marks the consolidation in our time of science as the single system of belief in which rational men and women might place their faith, and if not their faith, then certainly their devotion.”A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community’s cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?Not even close.Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?Not even close.Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?Not even close.Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?Close enough.Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?Not close enough.Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?Not even close to being close.Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences?Close enough.Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?Not even ballpark.Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt?Dead on.Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.This brilliant, incisive, and funny book explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it can be–indeed must be–the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves.From the Hardcover edition.
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Chögyam Trungpa - 1973
The universal tendency, he shows, is to see spirituality as a process of self-improvement—the impulse to develop and refine the ego when the ego is, by nature, essentially empty. "The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use," he said, "even spirituality." His incisive, compassionate teachings serve to wake us up from this trick we all play on ourselves, and to offer us a far brighter reality: the true and joyous liberation that inevitably involves letting go of the self rather than working to improve it. It is a message that has resonated with students for nearly thirty years, and remains fresh as ever today. This new edition includes a foreword by Chögyam Trungpa's son and lineage holder, Sakyong Mipham.
Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist
Christof Koch - 2012
This engaging book--part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation--describes Koch's search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest--his instinctual (if "romantic") belief that life is meaningful.Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a "fringy" subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action.Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work--to uncover the roots of consciousness.
Integral Christianity: The Spirit's Call to Evolve
Paul R. Smith - 2011
The perspectives of integral theory and practice, articulated by Ken Wilber, help uncover the integral approach that Jesus advocated and demonstrated in the metaphors of his time and that traditional Christianity has largely been unable to see. Smith incorporates elements of traditional, modern, and postmodern theological viewpoints, including progressive, New Thought, and emerging/emergent ones. However, he goes beyond all of them and moves to a Christianity that is devoted to following both the historical Jesus and the Risen Christ whose Spirit beckons to us from the future. Smith says, "The oldest thing you can say about God is that God is always doing something new. Jesus pushed his own religion to newness by including the best of its past, and transcending the worst of its present. He calls us to do the same, whatever our religion is today."
The Flat-Earth Conspiracy
Eric Dubay - 2014
For almost 500 years, the masses have been thoroughly deceived by a cosmic fairy-tale of astronomical proportions. We have been taught a falsehood so gigantic and diabolical that it has blinded us from our own experience and common sense, from seeing the world and the universe as they truly are. Through pseudo-science books and programs, mass media and public education, universities and government propaganda, the world has been systematically brain-washed, slowly indoctrinated over centuries into the unquestioning belief of the greatest lie of all time. A multi-generational conspiracy has succeeded, in the minds of the masses, to pick up the fixed Earth, shape it into a ball, spin it in circles, and throw it around the Sun! The greatest cover-up of all time, NASA and Freemasonry's biggest secret, is that we are living on a plane, not a planet, that Earth is the flat, stationary center of the universe.
The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality
Richard Panek - 2010
In the past few years, a handful of scientists have been in a race to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only 4 percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every planet, star, and galaxy. The rest—96 percent of the universe—is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of how scientists reached this conclusion, and what they’re doing to find this "dark" matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy. Based on in-depth, on-site reporting and hundreds of interviews—with everyone from Berkeley’s feisty Saul Perlmutter and Johns Hopkins’s meticulous Adam Riess to the quietly revolutionary Vera Rubin—the book offers an intimate portrait of the bitter rivalries and fruitful collaborations, the eureka moments and blind alleys, that have fueled their search, redefined science, and reinvented the universe.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
Rick Strassman - 2000
Rick Strassman conducted US DEA-approved clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected 60 volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical that is also manufactured by the human brain, consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many volunteers reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, especially "aliens." Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives.Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by René Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that alien abduction experiences are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.