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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorThe 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
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
David Deutsch · 487 pages
"A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the uni
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
Ideas and Opinions
Albert Einstein · 377 pages
Here is a new edition of the most definitive collection of Albert Einstein's popular writings, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. The selections range from his earliest days as a theoretical physicist to his death in 1955; from such subjects as relativity, nuclear war or peace, and religion and science, to human rights, economics, and government.
Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk
Massimo Pigliucci · 332 pages
"Creationists who dismiss Darwin's theory of evolution. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. Climate change deniers who dismiss the warming planet as a hoax. These are just some of the groups that, despite robust scientific evidence, embrace pseudoscientific beliefs and practices. Why do they believe bunk? And how does their ignorance threaten us all? Noted skeptic Massimo Pigliucci set
The Natural and the Human
Stephen Gaukroger · 411 pages
Stephen Gaukroger presents an original account of the development of empirical science and the understanding of human behaviour from the mid-eighteenth century. Since the seventeenth century, science in the west has undergone a unique form of cumulative development in which it has been consolidated through integration into and shaping of a culture. But in the eighteenth century, science was cut lo
The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason
Victor J. Stenger · 282 pages
Stenger describes how secularists have jumped on the anti-Islam hysteria generated after September 11 to take the offensive against religion generally, most often the Abrahamic monotheistic religions of the West.
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion
Ken Wilber · 225 pages
Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
Thomas Nagel · 140 pages
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary the
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.
The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist
Richard Feynman · 133 pages
In April 1963, Richard P. Feynman gave a series of remarkable lectures at the University of Washington in Seattle. These three consecutive talks were classic Feynman - full of wit and wisdom - but their subject matter was wholly unexpected: Feynman spoke not as a physicist but as a concerned fellow citizen, revealing his uncommon insights into the religious, political, and social issues of the day
The Hedgehog, the Fox & the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science & the Humanities
Stephen Jay Gould · 274 pages
Stephen Jay Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long. To establish his two protagonists, Gould draws from a seventh century b.c. proverb attributed to the Greek soldier-poet Archilochus that said roughly, "The fox devi
The 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 Logic of Scientific Discovery
Karl R. Popper · 480 pages
When first published in 1959, this book revolutionized contemporary thinking about science and knowledge. It remains the one of the most widely read books about science to come out of the twentieth century.
Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
Antonio R. Damasio · 368 pages
"Here, in a humane work of science, Damasio draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support the human spirit's greatest creations.". "Damasio's new book focuses on what feelings are and reveals the biology of our survival mechanisms. It rediscovers a thinker whose work prefigures modern neuroscie
The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture
Fritjof Capra · 464 pages
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
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Barbara Ehrenreich · 272 pages
"In middle age, Ehrenreich came across the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence and set out to reconstruct that quest, which had taken her to the study of science and through a cataclysmic series of uncanny-or as she later learned to call them, "mystical"-experiences. A staunch atheist and rationalist, she is profoundly shaken by the implications of her life-long search. Part mem
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.
Physics
Aristotle · 301 pages
Nearly all the works Aristotle (384-322 BCE) prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as practical; logical; physical; metaphysical; on art; other; fragments.
The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura
Titus Lucretius Carus · 255 pages
The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine
Alister E. McGrath, Joanna Collicutt Mcgrath · 98 pages