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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe God Delusion
Richard Dawkins · 416 pages
Publication Date: January 16, 2008 A preeminent scientist—and the world's most prominent atheist—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker f
The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
Frans de Waal · 304 pages
A renowned primatologist argues that ethical behavior witnessed in animals is the evolutionary and biological origin of human fairness and explains that morality has more to do with natural instincts than with religion.
A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness
Michael Pollan · 320 pages
The Meaning of Human Existence
Edward O. Wilson · 207 pages
How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examini
How the Mind Works
Steven Pinker · 661 pages
"Presented with extraordinary lucidity, cogency and panache...Powerful and gripping...To have read [the book] is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche...a glittering tour de force" - Spectator "Why do memories fade? Why do we lose our tempers? Why do fools fall in love? Pinker's objective in this erudite account is to explore the nature and history of the human
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson · 704 pages
The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk--a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate--became the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom an
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
Oliver Sacks · 243 pages
In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who
The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture
Fritjof Capra · 464 pages
Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality
Patricia S. Churchland · 273 pages
"What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain."--Jacket.
Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life
Stephen Jay Gould · 248 pages
"Stephen Jay Gould sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance. Instead of choosing between science and religion, Gould asks, why not opt for a golden mean that accords dignity and distinction to each realm?". "At the heart of Gould's penetrating argument is a lucid, contemporary principle he calls NOMA (for nonoverlapping magisteria) - a "blessedly simple
Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible
Jerry A. Coyne · 336 pages
**The New York Times bestselling author Jerry Coyne explains why any attempt to make religion compatible with science is doomed to fail.** In his provocative new book, evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion — including faith, dogma, and revelation — leads
Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
Jim Holt · 309 pages
Why is there a world rather than nothing at all? This question remains the most curious and most enduring of all metaphysical mysteries. Moving away from the narrower paths of Christopher Hitchens, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking who insist that science alone is capable of explaining how our cosmos came into being, the author enters this debate as he examines our efforts to grasp the origins of
The Society of Mind
Marvin Minsky · 339 pages
An authority on artificial intelligence introduces a theory that explores the workings of the human mind and the mysteries of thought.
Think: Why You Should Question Everything
Guy P. Harrison · 270 pages
"This accessible and introductory guide to critical thinking will help you think like a scientist, learn to question everything, and understand how your own brain can trip you up. This fresh and exciting approach to science, skepticism, and critical thinking will enlighten and inspire readers of all ages. With a mix of wit and wisdom, it challenges everyone to think like a scientist, embrace the s
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
David Foster Wallace · 340 pages
*"A gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite."*—The New York Times. With a new introduction by Neal Stephenson. Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? David Foster Wallace brings his intellectual ambition and characteristic bravura style to the story of how mathematicians have struggled to understand the infinite, from the ancient Greeks to the ninete
Religion and Science
Bertrand Russell · 255 pages
"In this timely work, Russell, philosopher, agnostic, mathematician, and renowned peace advocate, offers a brief yet insightful study of the conflicts between science and traditional religion during the last four centuries. Examining accounts in which scientific advances clashed with Christian doctrine or biblical interpretations of the day, from Galileo and the Copernican Revolution, to the medi
The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age
John Horgan · 368 pages
Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
Michael Shermer · 211 pages
When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Susan McCarthy · 272 pages
The Meme Machine
Susan Blackmore · 264 pages
After Richard Dawkins' *The Selfish Gene*, Susan Blackmore drive us deeply into the theory of the meme, social and cultural "replicators", trying to explain the human unique ability to imitate. Altruism, ideas, human behaviours, sex, poetry, music... seems to be simply the result of such as memetic selection... > Even our inner conscious self and our sense of free will are illlusion created by
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
Oren Harman · 451 pages
Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
Paul Bloom · 280 pages
In this fascinating and witty account, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom draws on insights from child development, philosophy, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to examine the science behind our curious desires, attractions, and tastes, covering everything from the animal instincts for sex and food to the uniquely human taste for art, music, and stories.