Favorite science books, recommendations

[BurtWorm]

At the moment, I'm reading James Watson's The Double Helix and Darwin's The Origin of Species, trying to get a deeper grounding in the sciences for an English major. These will certainly be on the list when I finish them, but as of this moment, my favorite science books are:

The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
Guns, Germs and Steel by, Jared Diamond
The Ancestor's Tale, by Richard Dawkins
The Heretic in Darwin's Court (a bio of Alfred Russel Wallace), by Ross A. Slotten
Basin and Range, by John McPhee
Victorian Sensation (about the publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation), by James A. Secord.

Anyone want to recommend a good read?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. the Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene

[skids]

2. Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert. n/t

[unhappycamper]

3. my favorites:

Collapse, by Jared Diamond
Frozen earth : the once and future story of ice ages, by Doug Macdougall
The two-mile time machine : ice cores, abrupt climate change, and our future, by Richard B. Alley
The Little Ice Age : how climate made history 1300-1850, by Brian Fagan
A short history of nearly everything, by Bill Bryson
The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory, by Brian R. Greene

[carnie_sf]

4. Introduction to electrodynamics

[phantom power]

5. At Home In the Universe, by Stuart Kauffman

[HuckleB]

6. Recent Reads:

Behavioral Neurology by Jonathan H. Pincus and Gary J. Tucker
Synaptic Self by Joseph Ledoux
Better Than Prozac by Samuel H. Barondes
Looking for Spinoza by Antonio Damasio
The Essential Difference (Male and Female Brains and The Truth About Autism) by Simon Baron-Cohen



All very worth reads, in my humble opinion. Behavioral Neurology may be a bit dense for anyone but the most interested, however.

[Viking12]

7. Uncertain Science, Uncertain World by Henry Pollack

Some Reviews:

"Uncertain Science … Uncertain World gives the layman an excellent inside look at how science works and flourishes even though it is immersed in uncertainty. Pollack analyses the paradox that society is unable or unwilling to address environmental problems of global scale - often under the pretence that there’s not enough scientific certainty to take action - while at the same time the insurance industry and other businesses routinely hedge the risks attendant to an uncertain future. It’s my hope that this very clearly written book, devoid of both polemics and equations, will be widely read by the general public and policy-makers." Paul Crutzen, Winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on the ozone hole

"Uncertain Science … Uncertain World is certain to clarify one of the most fundamental popular misconceptions about science - that it is exact and certain. Henry Pollack demolishes the mythology about certainty in science with short and clear examples of how uncertainty is both endemic to science and not a cause for paralysis or inaction. This well-written book is a welcome antidote to the misrepresentations of special interests who misuse scientific uncertainty to stall public policy and advance their own agendas." Stephen Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology at Stanford University and author of Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can’t Afford To Lose

[Skinner]

8. Some of my favorites...

(Alphabetically by author)

The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond
The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris
Genome, by Matt Ridley
Longitude, by Dava Sobel
The Seven Daughters of Eve, by Bryan Sykes
Adam's Curse, by Bryan Sykes
The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright

[electron_blue]

23. I second the motion for longitude!

It was awesome - totally changed my view of seafaring travel in the past, plust gave me a glimmer of understanding how politics ruined things, even back then.

[hecate77]

9. Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, by Lee Smolin

One of the rare books that presents anything but the string theory approach to quantum gravity, even though the string theory approach is probably the least likely answer.....

[On the Road]

10. The Second Creation

It's a history of the development of quantum mechanics told chronologically with emphasis on the human beings who made the discoveries and the state of knowledge at the time. The book refers to the mathematics and provides simple equations so that you can understand the nature of the controversies without having to grapple with the details of higher math.

Before reading the book, I had read an article by Martinus Veltman in Scientific American on the Higgs particle and it made no sense to me. Afterwards, I reread the same article and everything fell into place. Just my experience.



And I love John McPhee's geology volumes: Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, etc.

[hallc]

11. Depends on your interests...

But since you seem interested in Evolution...

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
The Triple Helix - Richard Lewontin
God, The Devil, and Darwin - Neil Shanks
Creationism's Trojan Horse - Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross
Anything by Stephen Jay Gould

And some other of my faves...
Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer
Science Friction - Michael Shermer
The Demon in the Freezer - Richard Preston

[MadAsHell]

12. The Demon Haunted World ....

Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

I am reading The Ancestor's Tale right now.

[bemildred]

13. Chaos -- Gleick

The Dancing Wu Li Masters -- Zukav
The Blind Watchmaker -- Dawkins
Emergence -- Steven Johnson
Our Kind -- Marvin Harris

(These are all in the nature of popular science books.)

[bemildred]

14. Oh, and this guy is smart as a whip:

http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/

[Kraklen]

15. I can't think of any good ones.

With the exception of the collected works of Stephen Jay Gould.

I'm quite serious. There's a real vacuum out there I think.

Although I'm considering things like "Guns, Germs, and Steel" to be more on geography and history than science.

[BurtWorm]

19. Guns, Germs and Steel is multidisciplinary, at least.

It's a kind of scientific history, or historical science. It's not the traditional history by document, but, rather, history by scientific evidence. And its explanations of the "causes" of history are rooted, not in great men or in history itself, but in environmental and evolutionary factors. That's why I do consider it a kind of science book, a natural history of human history.

[SteppingRazor]

16. Why not wade through some Stephen Hawking?

Black Holes and Baby Universes is pretty good, or A Brief History of Time if you don't want your brain to hurt as much :)

[NNadir]

17. March's "Advanced Organic Chemistry," Stacy's "Nuclear Reactor Physics,"

Cotton and Wilkonson's "Advanced Inorganic Chemistry," Cottons "Applications of Group Theory in Chemistry," Weinberg's "The First Nuclear Era," and Seaborg's "The Elements Beyond Uranium."

These are my recent favorites.

[salvorhardin]

18. Enchanted Looms by Rodney Cotterill

Solid explanation of the biological and neurological underpinnings of consciousness.

[Orsino]

20. William F. Allman's THE STONE AGE PRESENT

It's a look at the evolution of the human brain, not as some generic computer, but as a survival tool geared toward the management of ever-widening social circles, especially as a "cheater detector." Fascinating comparisons of our brains to those of other primates.

[Orsino]

21. Ward & Brownlee's RARE EARTH and...

The Life and Death of Planet Earth.

The former is an introduction to the new science of astrobiology, and makes the case for life's probably being fairly common throughout the universe. Multicellular life, however, is shown to have some rather complicated requirements, and must be incredibly rare.

The latter is a sort of sequel, and takes a closer look at the life cycle of Earth. In what is projected to be a twelve-billion-year span of the Earth's existence, complex life only became possible a half-billion years ago. Ward and Brownlee project that changing conditions will kill off everything but single-celled organisms in another half-billion years. Then its back to slime molds and stromatolites for a couple-few billion years more, before other factors sterilize the planet for good.

[electron_blue]

22. Carl Sagan

My fave's:

Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective

Yes, they are dated in some sense, but in many ways he was ahead of his time. These books were incredibly inspirational to me when they came out. Hm, maybe I should re-read them?

[mike6640]

24. The Blind Watchmaker

By Richard Dawkins

An excellent and well thought out argument against 'intelligent design'.

Evolution is still a theory.....but nothing explains it better.

On edit: Also highly recommend Asimov's 'The Wellsprings of Life' and 'Beginnings'.