
5 Great Science Books to Expand Your Mind - babyshake
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_great_science_books.php
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judegomila
To add to this:

The Emperor's New Mind, by Roger Penrose. Really cool book.

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, by Penrose
again.

Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness,
Penrose.

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ionfish
I've always been rather dubious about Penrose's approach to consciousness. He
seems to be of the school of "Put two metaphysically mysterious things
together, in the hope that we can explain one in terms of the other."

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babyshake
Godel, Escher, Bach is one of the best books ever written in this cosmos.

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robg
I agree, but it's also probably one of the most owned but never finished books
in the cosmos. Brief History of Time (by Hawking) too.

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bookhuddle
Agree that "Brief History..." is a great book.

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mechanical_fish
Five (or six) good books about five different sciences:

Materials Science: Gordon, _Structures, or Why Things Don't Fall Down_.

Linguistics: Pinker, _The Language Instinct_

Evolutionary Biology: Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_

Molecular Biology: David Clark, _Molecular Biology Made Simple and Fun_

Physics: the canonical answer is "Feynman". I won't argue with that. His
little books ( _QED_ and _The Character of Physical Law_ ) are quite nice.

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helveticaman
+1 _The Blind Watchmaker_ , although I'd argue _The Selfish Gene_ is a better
introduction to the field. _The Blind Watchmaker_ is somewhat more focussed on
argument evolution versus creationism. Still, awesome stuff.

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bookhuddle
Not related to the cosmos, but "Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23
Chapters" is a great book. It presents information in a story format that
allows people without much scientific background to understand and appreciate
the genome.

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zandorg
I thought Godel, Escher, Bach to be too hard to read.

Instead I recommend Kip Thorne's Black Holes & Time Warps, a great book.

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kirpekar
Missed out: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared M.
Diamond

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mickt
Anyone know any good books about Chemistry for those of us that know naught
about it (particularly books related to programming)?

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hugh
Chemistry and programming? You mean, like, computational chemistry? (That's an
awfully hard subject to get into, and I don't know any books written at an
introductory level.)

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mickt
How about a good basic Chemistry book?

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mechanical_fish
I picked up Linus Pauling's book. Famous guy, fairly literate book, but I
haven't gotten far enough through it to see if it's really great or not.

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mickt
Good reviews on Amazon and it's inexpensive. So maybe I'll pick up a copy. I'm
asking cause I might get a gig working for a non-profit that does a lot of
biological research.

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jaaron
Complexity is a great book. Inspired me when I read it in high school years
ago.

