Book picks similar to
The Invisible Pyramid by Loren Eiseley
science
philosophy
non-fiction
essays
The Scientist as Rebel
Freeman Dyson - 2006
Like artists and poets, they are free spirits who resist the restrictions their cultures impose on them. In their pursuit of Nature’s truths, they are guided as much by imagination as by reason, and their greatest theories have the uniqueness and beauty of great works of art.Dyson argues that the best way to understand science is by understanding those who practice it. He tells stories of scientists at work, ranging from Isaac Newton’s absorption in physics, alchemy, theology, and politics, to Ernest Rutherford’s discovery of the structure of the atom, to Albert Einstein’s stubborn hostility to the idea of black holes. His descriptions of brilliant physicists like Edward Teller and Richard Feynman are enlivened by his own reminiscences of them. He looks with a skeptical eye at fashionable scientific fads and fantasies, and speculates on the future of climate prediction, genetic engineering, the colonization of space, and the possibility that paranormal phenomena may exist yet not be scientifically verifiable.Dyson also looks beyond particular scientific questions to reflect on broader philosophical issues, such as the limits of reductionism, the morality of strategic bombing and nuclear weapons, the preservation of the environment, and the relationship between science and religion. These essays, by a distinguished physicist who is also a lovely writer, offer informed insights into the history of science and fresh perspectives on contentious current debates about science, ethics, and faith.
Three Roads To Quantum Gravity
Lee Smolin - 2000
"Provocative, original, and unsettling." -- The New York Review of Books "An excellent writer, a creative thinker." -- Nature
50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die, vol 2
Various - 2016
Barrie]- Cabin Fever [ B. M. Bower]- The Secret Garden [Frances Hodgson Burnett]- A Little Princess [Frances Hodgson Burnett]- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [Lewis Carroll]- The King in Yellow [Robert William Chambers]- The Man Who Knew Too Much [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]- The Woman in White [Wilkie Collins]- The Most Dangerous Game [Richard Connell]- On the Origin of Species, 6th Edition [Charles Darwin]- Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe]- The Iron Woman [Margaret Deland]- David Copperfield [Charles Dickens]- Oliver Twist [Charles Dickens]- A Tale of Two Cities [Charles Dickens]- The Double [Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]- The Hound of the Baskervilles [Arthur Conan Doyle]- The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes [Arthur Conan Doyle]- The Three Musketeers [Alexandre Dumas]- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Francis Scott Fitzgerald]- A Room with a View [E. M. Forster]- Dream Psychology [Sigmund Freud]- Tess of the d'Urbervilles [Thomas Hardy]- Siddhartha [Hermann Hesse]- Dubliners [James Joyce]- The Metamorphosis [Franz Kafka]- The Arabian Nights [Andrew Lang]- The Sea Wolf [Jack London]- The Call of Cthulhu [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]- Anne of Green Gables [Lucy Maud Montgomery]- Beyond Good and Evil [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]- The Murders in the Rue Morgue [Edgar Allan Poe]- The Black Cat [Edgar Allan Poe]- The Raven [Edgar Allan Poe]- Swann's Way [Marcel Proust]- Romeo and Juliet [William Shakespeare]- Treasure Island [Robert Louis Stevenson]- The Elements of Style [William Strunk Jr.]- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [Mark Twain]- The Prince and the Pauper [Mark Twain]- The Kama Sutra [Vatsyayana]- A Journey into the Center of the Earth [Jules Verne]- The Mysterious Island [Jules Verne]- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea [Jules Verne]- The War of the Worlds [H. G. Wells]- The Time Machine [H. G. Wells]- The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde- The Voyage Out by Virginia WoolfAlso available : 50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die Vol: 1 (Golden Deer Classics)Classics Authors Super Set Serie 1 (Golden Deer Classics)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
Michel Foucault - 1966
The result is nothing less than an archaeology of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths.In the work that established him as the most important French thinker since Sartre, Michel Foucault offers startling evidence that “man”—man as a subject of scientific knowledge—is at best a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011
Mary Roach - 2010
Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 includes Atul Gawande, Jonathan Franzen, Deborah Blum, Malcolm Gladwell, Oliver Sacks, Jon Mooallem, Jon Cohen, Luke Dittrich, and others
Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
Werner Heisenberg - 1958
The theme of Heisenberg's exposition is that words and concepts familiar in daily life can lose their meaning in the world of relativity and quantum physics. This in turn has profound philosophical implications for the nature of reality and for our total world view.
Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
Derrick Jensen - 2006
Accepting the increasingly widespread belief that industrialized culture inevitably erodes the natural world, Endgame sets out to explore how this relationship impels us towards a revolutionary and as-yet undiscovered shift in strategy. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.
Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees
Roger Fouts - 1997
This remarkable book describes Fout's odyssey from novice researcher to celebrity scientist to impassioned crusader for the rights of animals. Living and conversing with these sensitive creatures has given him a profound appreciation of what they can teach us about ourselves. It has also made Fouts an outspoken opponent of biomedical experimentation on chimpanzees. A voyage of scientific discovery and interspecies communication, this is a stirring tale of friendship, courage, and compassion that will change forever the way we view our biological--and spritual--next of kin. Fouts is a professor of Psychology.
Life in the Universe: A Beginner's Guide
Lewis Dartnell - 2007
Lewis Dartnell considers some of the fascinating questions facing researchers today. Could life exist anywhere else in the universe? What might aliens really look like? Dartnell explains why Earth is uniquely suited for life and reveals our profound connection to the cosmos.
Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript
Henry David Thoreau - 1999
In transcribing the 150-year-old manuscript’s cryptic handwriting and complex notations, Thoreau specialist Bradley Dean has performed a "heroic feat of decipherment" (Booklist) to bring this great work to light. Readers will discover "passages that reach for the transcendentalist ideal of writing new scriptures, yet grounding this Bible in a vision of practical ecology" (Boston). Beautifully illustrated throughout with line drawings of the natural life Thoreau considers on his walks, Wild Fruits is "well worth any nature lover’s attention" (Christian Science Monitor).
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
John Gribbin - 1984
It is so important that it provides the fundamental underpinning of all modern sciences. Without it, we'd have no nuclear power or nuclear bombs, no lasers, no TV, no computers, no science of molecular biology, no understanding of DNA, no genetic engineering—at all. John Gribbin tells the complete story of quantum mechanics, a truth far stranger than any fiction. He takes us step-by-step into an ever more bizarre and fascinating place—requiring only that we approach it with an open mind. He introduces the scientists who developed quantum theory. He investigates the atom, radiation, time travel, the birth of the universe, superconductors and life itself. And in a world full of its own delights, mysteries and surprises, he searches for Schrödinger's Cat—a search for quantum reality—as he brings every reader to a clear understanding of the most important area of scientific study today—quantum physics.
T. Rex and the Crater of Doom
Walter Álvarez - 1997
It produced a cloud of roiling debris that blackened the sky for months as well as other geologic disasters--and triggered the demise of Tyrannosaurus rex. We know what happened largely because Walter Alvarez--synthesizing the findings of experts from a variety of scientific fields--has written a gripping story of the decades-long search for the cause of the dinosaurs' extinction. Painstakingly assembling clues from the Italian Apennines and the depths of the Pacific and presenting them with the excitement of a great novel, T. rex and the Crater of Doom is a book of undeniable importance and irresistible appeal by a major figure in contemporary science. " Engaging and witty. Read Alvarez for and excellent account of how scientists pose questions and seek to solve them." --Scientific American " First-rate...Alvarez provides the up-close tale of the comet or asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs." --San Francisco Chronicle
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Carlo Rovelli - 2014
A playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics, it's already a major bestseller in Italy and the United Kingdom. Carlo Rovelli offers surprising—and surprisingly easy to grasp—explanations of general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: to the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, back to the origins of the cosmos, and into the workings of our minds. “Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world,” Rovelli writes. “And it’s breathtaking.”