What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorBreaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Daniel C. Dennett · 448 pages
For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why—and how—it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion's
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Edward O. Wilson · 375 pages
"In this new book, the American biologist Edward O. Wilson argues for the fundamental unity of all knowledge and the need to search for consilience - the proof that everything in our world is organized in terms of a small number of fundamental natural laws that comprise the principles underlying every branch of learning." "Professor Wilson shows how and why our explosive rise in intellectual maste
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
The Evolution of God
Robert Wright · 567 pages
In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains
Mutual Aid
Pyotr Kropotkin · 278 pages
Peter Kropotkin initially published the chapters of Mutual Aid as individual essays in the intellectual periodical The Nineteenth Century over the course of six years. In 1902 the essays were published as a book. In it, Kropotkin explores the role of mutually-beneficial cooperation across both animal and human societies. He begins by outlining how animals, both within and across species, thrive
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Steven Pinker · 528 pages
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
Pascal Boyer · 430 pages
Formerly at Princeton, King's College, Cambridge and the University of Lyon, Pascal Boyer is Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St Louis, MissouriWhile human religious practice and belief are extraordinarily varied, they are nevertheless not infinitely so. The varieties of belief have provided generations of anthropologists and religious scholars with material for research; ther
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels · 56 pages
"The Communist Manifesto," penned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is a revolutionary treatise advocating for the overthrow of capitalist systems and the establishment of a classless society. Published in 1848, its succinct yet powerful prose remains a cornerstone of socialist ideology, inspiring movements worldwide.
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
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire · 186 pages
"First published in Portuguese in 1968, [this book] was translated and published in English in 1970. Paulo Freire's work has helped to empower countless people throughout the world and continues to possess a special urgency as the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in urban centers around the world continues. The 50th anniversary edition includes a new intr
Miracles
C.S. Lewis · 192 pages
An impeccable inquiry into the proposition that supernatural events can happen in this world. C. S. Lewis uses his remarkable logic to build a solid argument for the existence of divine intervention. "This book is intended as a preliminary to historical inquiry. I am not a trained historian, and I shall not examine the historical evidence for the Christian miracles. My effort is to put my reade
The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
Will Durant · 543 pages
Originally published in 1926, ‘The Story of Philosophy’ profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, written by Will Durant, an American writer, historian, philosopher, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. In this enlightening and eminently readable book, Will Durant accounts the lives, ideas and views of various critical philosophical thinkers throughout history. Starting with
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
D.T. Suzuki · 136 pages
One of the world’s leading authorities on Zen Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki was the author of more than a hundred works on the subject in both Japanese and English, and was most instrumental in bringing the teachings of Zen Buddhism to the attention of the Western world. Written in a lively, accessible, and straightforward manner, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism is illuminating for the serious student
The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
Karl R. Popper · 364 pages
How to Do Things with Words
J.L. Austin · 166 pages
This work sets out Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an exhaustive examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, Austin here finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of 'illocutionary forces' of utterances which has i
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution
Ken Wilber · 851 pages
In a tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilber traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind, and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all three of these domains. In each case, evolution has a "direction," a tendency to produce more highly organized patterns. The "spirit of evolution" lies in its directionality: order out of chaos. After arriving at the eme
A Devil's Chaplain
Richard Dawkins · 272 pages
'Moet u zich eens voorstellen wat voor boek een kapelaan van de duivel zou kunnen schrijven over de onhandige, verspillende, blunderende en gruwelijk gemene werken van de natuur.' Dit schreef Darwin in 1856 aan een vriend. Maar, hoe gruwelijk en onhandig ook, willekeurig zijn de evolutionaire processen allerminst, zo laat Richard Dawkins zien in zijn even nuchtere als helder onderbouwde werk. Ka
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
Michel Foucault · 176 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.