# Recommend me a book about science.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 1, 2005, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992 "2005-05-01T23:21:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@furthur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furthur)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2005, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/21 "2005-05-02T04:38:42Z")
Oh, and I second the vote for Feynman. Such a brilliant man and quite funny in (natch) **Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.** Of course that was more of a memoir, but he could make any topic interesting.
Mrs. Furthur
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### Author:  [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2005, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/22 "2005-05-02T04:40:43Z")
A third vote for Richard Feynman. What a man! What a mind!
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### Author:  [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2005, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/23 "2005-05-02T04:50:04Z")
Check out my recent reads in [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6114040#post6114040) thread.
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### Author:  [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2005, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/24 "2005-05-02T04:59:15Z")
For ecology, you will find ne better introduction than the seminal [The Diversity of Life](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393319407/qid=1115009539/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-6081712-6963863?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), by Edward O. Wilson, perhaps the greatest naturalist in the world today.
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### Author:  [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2005, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/25 "2005-05-02T06:25:03Z")
I was very much in the same situation as you – solid humanities education, but a bit light on the science. What set me off down the road of reading tons of stuff in evolutionary theory, biology, and related fields was reading Jeremy Campbell’s _Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life_ as a followup to Thomas Pynchon’s _The Crying of Lot 49_. At this remove, it’s easy to see lots of problems with _Grammatical Man_; it’s wrong in several areas, and by now it’s seriously out of date. But it started me thinking about the connections between information theory, evolution, and genetics in ways that have informed everything I’ve read since.
As a “starter course” in various scientific disciplines, I highly recommend the books in the [Basic Books Science Masters](http://williamcalvin.com/bookshelf/ScienceMasters.htm) series. Each is less than 200 pages, written by one of the leading lights in the field in question, and is very much oriented to the layman. Each of them oversimplifies, omits important areas, and reflects the biases of its author, but they each present a useful introduction to an important topic, and most are very well written. Richard Dawkins’ _River Out of Eden_ is an outstanding introduction to evolutionary theory, and Daniel Dennett’s _Kinds of Minds_ and William Calvin’s _How Brains Think_ are nearly as good.
Jonathan Weiner’s _The Beak of the Finch_ has already been recommended; I’ll second the recommendation as perhaps the best book out there on microevolution. Carl Zimmer’s _At the Water’s Edge_ is a useful complement to it for the macroevolutionary perspective. Matt Ridley’s books have also been mentioned already, and again I have to agree – his _Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human_ is perhaps the best book out there on the current state of thinking about this age-old question, even better than Steven Pinker’s excellent but sometimes too polemical _The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature_. Ridley’s _The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation_ has had a profound impact on my thinking about politics, social structure, etc., and both _Genome_ and _The Red Queen_ are excellent.
I’ve already mentioned [William Calvin](http://www.williamcalvin.com); he’s my favorite neuroscientist. Some of his books (_The Cerebral Code_, for example) are over my head, but most are accessible for the lay reader and present a compelling case for his theories on exactly how the brain goes about the business of thinking. And the [Bookshelf](http://williamcalvin.com/bookshelf/) section of his web site is a treasure trove of recommendations for further reading.
Steven Pinker’s _The Language Instinct_ has become one of the classics of contemporary science writing for the layman, for good reason. His _How the Mind Works_ is nearly as good, and is a bit more comprehensive than some of the other works mentioned already.
Antonio Damasio has written at least three excellent books on the interplay between emotion, sensation, and cognition: _Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain_; _The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness_; and _Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain_. V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee’s _Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind_ is also extremely enlightening on the complex interrelationship between the body and mind, especially the ways in which “rational” thought can be undermined or superceded by sensory input.
The big kahuna for me is Daniel Dennett’s _Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life_. Dennett painstakingly and brilliantly sets forth his thesis that Darwin’s theory of evolution is “the most important idea anyone ever had”. He is logically rigorous (even to a fault) and pretty completely demolishes the positions of most of those who would disagree with him. I’ve now read this book three times through, learing more from it each time. It’s one of those rare books, however, that isn’t necessarily easier to read on subsequent times through it; it’s perhaps the most informationally dense book I’ve ever managed to make it through. It’s not that Dennett’s not an exceptionally good writer, or that he’s not entertaining – he’s both, to a surprisingly high degree. It’s just that there’s so much here, and Dennett is so intellectually rigorous, that you have to take your time with this one. I can normally put away a 600 page book like this one in a week or so of opportunistic reading; each time through DDI has taken me at least four to six weeks. I can’t recommend it highly enough, but I don’t recommend starting with it; one of Richard Dawkins’ books, a couple of other books on evolutionary theory, and Dennett’s _Kinds of Minds_ should probably be considered prerequisites. You also probably ought to read some of Stephen J. Gould’s work to get a sense of what it is Dennett is attacking so formidably here.
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### Author:  [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2005, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/26 "2005-05-02T07:35:48Z")
> [@furthur](#):
>
> I’m fond of biology myself. Are you? What about Carl Zimmer’s **Parasite Rex** , which gives the most amazing details about the cycles and types of parasites in nature and is not a bit dull, very interesting and ghoulish in the best kind of way.
Seconded! If you don’t mind pics of what happens when a tapeworm accidentally ends up in your brain (it doesn’t end well for the worm or the host…)
**Last Chance to See** also get’s my vote, although I wouldn’t really call it a science book.
Bryson is good. I never found Paul Davies or Stephen Hawking particularly engaging as writers. John Gribbin isn’t bad (avoid his sci-fi, though!)
Asimov was a superb science essayist with a real gift for explanation - always worth a read, including his stuff for kids. Hard to beat for the basics.
Feynmann is interesting. Many of his books are more biographical/historical than science texts, but still well worth a read. He wrote with the gushy enthusiasm of a fifteen-year old, and he really, genuinely, absolutely did not give a damn about what anybody thought of him. He figured just about anything was a learnable skill, including drawing circles freehand and picking up women in bars, and taught himself both.
Just to throw another couple of titles into the pile - **Life at the Extremes** , by Frances Ashcroft, and **Opening Skinner’s Box** by Lauren Slater. The first is a collection of essays on what happens to the human body at its endurance limits of temperature and pressure (lots of arctic explorers, mountaineers, deep divers and people lost in deserts) - fair bit of physics, chemistry and biology in an interesting context.
The second datails a set of important psychological experiments of the 20th century, with some interesting follow-ups and repeats. Example - the infamous Milgram experiments on authority, where volunteers thought they were giving electric shocks to unwilling victims. Slater tracked down some of the original participants and interviewed them.
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### Author:  [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2005, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/27 "2005-05-02T13:16:45Z")
I think I have my summer reading list now. Thanks, all!
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### Author:  [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/28 "2005-05-04T08:09:03Z")
Just a nother to add to the list, my personal favourite - **Hyperspace** by Mitchio Kaku
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### Author:  [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/29 "2005-05-04T15:26:33Z")
a couple quick thoughts:
David Quammen is right at the boundary between science writing and travel/outdoor writing (he used to write for Outside magazine), if that sounds interesting to you, then you’d probably be interested in it.
There’s a regular anthology “Best Science Writing of 200x”, which I’ve found good for shorter magazine style pieces.
Also second Stephen Jay Gould, almost any of his collections are good.
And getting away from reading for fun and interest to reading because it’s important (in a humanities way), Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man” is also tremendously relevant reading for any discussion of either race or measuring intelligence. But the key is to just gloss over his abstruse statistics discussion, and get into his analysis of papers from the 1800’s where he demonstrates the incredible amount of conscious and unconscious bias in the results that ‘proved’ the inferiourity of whatever ‘race’ was considered inferiour at that time. Gives you a good base to critically look at “The Bell Curve” or whatever the latest tripe is.
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### Author:  [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/30 "2005-05-04T16:05:53Z")
I’m going to buck the trend of suggesting current books and advise you to read Darwin’s [The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400041279/qid=1115221909/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/104-5083798-8508730). If you don’t mind they Victorian -era verbage they are great foundations for the understanding of modern biology, and demonstrate how far ahead of the curve Darwin was even with respect to his fellow scientists and natural philosophers. (Darwin recognized that there was no end goal to evolution and speculated about the existance of what we now understand to be genes as the mechanism upon which natural selection affects.) After that, Steven Jay Gould and Matt Ridley are both quite readable. I like Dawkins (and tend to agree more with his views technically than I do Gould) but he does tend to get technical and involved in nitpicky diatrabes, and often brings in pointless atheistic tangents to his valid arguments.
Sagan’s [Cosmos](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345331354/qid=1115222215/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/104-5083798-8508730) and [The Demon-Haunted World](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345409469/qid=1115222215/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-5083798-8508730) are great introductions to general physical science and the applied scientific method. While Sagan was as much a politician and celebrity as a scientist, he genuinely understood and was passionate about science, and his writing, while not poetic, isn’t as stilted as many popular science books. Alan Dressler’s [Voyage To The Great Attractor](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679732985/qid=1115222313/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5083798-8508730?v=glance&s=books) is a good introduction to modern astrostronomy, but is even more noteworthy for being a very candid description of the benefits and perils collaborative science and seridipity in research.
John McPhee is more of a journalist (in the traditional sense, not a newshound) but many of his books, like [The Control of Nature](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374522596/qid=1115222608/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/104-5083798-8508730) delve heavily into aspects of natural science as they relate to the ordinary world. He’s a bit rambling–well, okay, much of his work is almost completely unstructured–but he gives you a narrated, comprehensive tour of whatever topic he’s covering; tangents, character biographies, geological descriptions, you name it. His writing is extremely visceral and very accessible even to a reader who isn’t particularly interested in the science.
Several people have recommended Bryson; I’m sorry to say that I don’t agree. Bryson admits his ignorance and it is apparent throughout the book. I skimmed through a few chapters while browsing at the bookstore one day and found it rife with errors, urban legands, and other misunderstandings. Apparently his publisher didn’t have the book vetted by anyone versed in the fields covered. (I also find his self-depricating style quickly annoying, but then I don’t like David Sederis either, so take that for what you will.) Ditto for James Burke.
Stranger
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### Author:  [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/31 "2005-05-04T16:14:46Z")
If you want to give yourself an overview of modern physics, I recommend _The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics_
by Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann.
It covers just about everything that happens in the field from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1978 Nobel Prize. But it does it in sort of a biographical way, rather than as a textbook. After reading it, you not only understand some physics, but you really understand physicists.
You see people like Feynman both from the point of view of his instructors, who thought of him as an upstart that started doing his famous diagrams just to avoid difficult math, as well as from the point of view of his students, who saw that he fully got the math (better than his teachers did, that’s for sure), but knew the diagrams make a lot of it unnecessary.
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### Author:  [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/32 "2005-05-04T17:15:54Z")
Leon Lederman’s [The God Particle : If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385312113/qid=1115226807/sr=8-2/ref=pd_csp_2/002-7159153-9950403?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
It’s a story about the nobel prize laureate’s search for the Higgs-Boson particle nicknamed “The God Particle” because “The God-damned particle” was no-no’ed by the publisher.
Quick excerpt:
> [@](#):
>
> IN THE VERY BEGINNING there was a void - a curious form of vacuum - a nothingness containing no space, no time, no matter, no light, no sound. Yet the laws of nature were in place, and this curious vacuum held potential. Like a giant boulder perched at the edge of a towering cliff…
>
> Wait a minute.
>
> Before the boulder falls, I should explain that I really don’t know what I’m talking about. A story logically begins at the beginning. But this story is about the universe, and unfortunately there are no data for the Very Beginning. None, zero. We don’t know anything about the universe until it reaches the mature age of a billionth of a trillionth of a second- that is, some very short time after creation in the Big Bang. When you read or hear anything about the birth of the universe, someone is making it up. We are in the realm of philosophy. Only God knows what happened at the Very Beginning (and so far She hasn’t let on).
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### Author:  [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/33 "2005-05-04T19:05:56Z")
> [@Saltire](#):
>
> If you want to give yourself an overview of modern physics, I recommend _The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics_
> by Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann.
It sounds interesting, but physics scares me. Well, _physics_ doesn’t scare me; learning about it does.
Ditto **stpauler** , nice try with the excerpt – it does make the topic sound very approachable. The book sounds interesting, but it’s physics again. Maybe I’ll just get someone to tell me I’m not smart enough for physics; even though I’m a grown-up, reverse psychology still works on me as well as it did when I was seven and my dad told me I was too young to read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy because I wouldn’t understand it. Or when I was ten, and he told me I was too young to read Jane Eyre. Or when – wait a minute! I think my dad may be a very crafty man.
**Stranger** , I read part of one of Bryson’s travelogues when I was a guest in someone’s house. I never finished it, partly because it was pretty awful and partly because I went home. I’ve never tried Sedaris or James Burke (that I know of), but will avoid them on your recommendation. I may try Darwin (I read something of his in college, but that was an age ago) since that ties in nicely with my new-found interest in mutations.
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### Author:  [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/34 "2005-05-04T19:07:39Z")
DAMN YOU, PEOPLE. Quit bringing up interesting books. Amazon already has a majority share of my soul and I’m now officially selling my mother into prostitution to pay for the rest of the books I just ordered. ☹
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### Author:  [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/35 "2005-05-04T20:31:42Z")
**The Lives of a Cell** by Lewis Thomas is probably the most fascinating science book I’ve ever read. It’s a short book, a collection of essays, really. It’s been quite a while since I read it, so I can’t go into any detail.
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### Author:  [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/36 "2005-05-04T21:46:43Z")
If you’re not afraid of a 19 MB PDF, there’s a free physics textbook available at [http://motionmountain.dse.nl/text.html](http://motionmountain.dse.nl/text.html) You can also get individual chapters [here.](http://motionmountain.dse.nl/search.html)
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### Author:  [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/37 "2005-05-04T22:11:40Z")
> [@Campion](#):
>
> Maybe I’ll just get someone to tell me I’m not smart enough for physics; even though I’m a grown-up, reverse psychology still works on me as well as it did when I was seven and my dad told me I was too young to read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy because I wouldn’t understand it. Or when I was ten, and he told me I was too young to read Jane Eyre. Or when – wait a minute! I think my dad may be a very crafty man.
You’re definitely not bright enough to comprehend physics, even though classical mechanics based only on a handful of easily demonstrated laws. Nope. You can’t get it, and you’re too young, and besides that, your grasp of English is way to limited to read anything more complicated than Barney’s Big Adventure.
How’s that for reverse psychology? 😛
> [@Campion](#):
>
> **Stranger** , I read part of one of Bryson’s travelogues when I was a guest in someone’s house. I never finished it, partly because it was pretty awful and partly because I went home. I’ve never tried Sedaris or James Burke (that I know of), but will avoid them on your recommendation. I may try Darwin (I read something of his in college, but that was an age ago) since that ties in nicely with my new-found interest in mutations.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds Bryson tedious. Darwin’s actually quite readable, and _The Voyage of the Beagle_ is a good story of scientific adventure and discovery. There’s quite an interesting backstory to it as well–Darwin was not the ship’s research zoologist and was wedged on board as a companion to the captain, even though they didn’t really get along.
Stranger
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### Author:  [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/38 "2005-05-04T22:47:04Z")
There are some great novels about science, if you like reading fiction. The best I can think of is The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. There are a hundred reasons to read this mighty book apart from the science, its a memoir of Levi’s life IIRC with each chaper titled after an element. So its more about Levi than chemistry, a gentle chemistry lesson from a truly great writer.
If anyone else knows of a novel like The Periodic Table I’d love to hear about it! 🙂
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### Author:  [@Campion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Campion)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2005, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/39 "2005-05-04T23:03:55Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> You’re definitely not bright enough to comprehend physics, even though classical mechanics based only on a handful of easily demonstrated laws. Nope. You can’t get it, and you’re too young, and besides that, your grasp of English is way to limited to read anything more complicated than Barney’s Big Adventure.
How dare you, sirrah! How dare you! You don’t even know me! Well, I’ll show you – hah.
> [@Stranger On A Train](#):
>
> How’s that for reverse psychology? 😛
I really am a sucker for that stuff. I can’t tell you how many life decisions I’ve made because someone told me not to do something! (Exhibit A: my career. Exhibit B: my house. Exhibit C: oh, I could go on and on!)
But I am grateful to all the suggestions here, and tonight I plan to swing by the Borders after dinner and see if they have any of these books there. By this time next month, expect to see me accepting my Nobel Prize for Knowledge of Scientific Stuff. ( **Myler** , I’ll keep my eyes peeled for something like the book you mention. If I should deign to wander upstairs to the “fiction” area, that is – now that I am a serious student of science, I shall have no need of such distractions.)
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### Author:  [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2005, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-a-book-about-science/301992/40 "2005-05-05T01:48:31Z")
> [@slortar](#):
>
> DAMN YOU, PEOPLE. Quit bringing up interesting books. Amazon already has a majority share of my soul and I’m now officially selling my mother into prostitution to pay for the rest of the books I just ordered. ☹
psst…there’s always the public library
I second _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, by the way. It was such an interesting read that I took it with me everywhere I went. Which is how it got stolen from me in the waiting room of the lab while I was having blood drawn one afternoon. :mad:
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