James Lovelock - The Revenge Of Gaia

*not-very-ninja edit*

Alan Weisman - The World Without Us

The Trouble With Physics doesnt sound that interesting because it focuses on string theory a lot
would rather read something from feynman

Hmm, Hawking only touched string theory briefly, and I haven't read much about it yet, so I may give The Trouble with Physics a go then. Then again Six Easy Pieces could be a good introductory to physics, before I read The Trouble With Physics?

You want to read some Brian Greene for a nice updated introduction to physics.
"The Fabric of the Cosmos" is a good book to get started

I loved "The Trouble With Physics - Smolin". His point is that the string theory is eating most of the resources while other theories are marginalized.

Heisenberg books are nice :o

A short history of nearly everything by bill bryson.

You beat me to it. Hands down overall best popular science book I've ever read.

Sounds interesting, gonna try it!

edit: loving it so far!

"Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick

Aaaages since I read that. Ahhh, back in the days when Fractint was an impressive app ;)

Edit: eek, latest build of fractint was oct 08, and its *still* DOS / win16.

dianetics - l. ron hubbard

xenu does not approves of this message.

what do i care? hes sealed in a cave somewhere by a force-field that has an eternal battery

hey, i could really use an eternal battery. got one spare?

AA or AAA?

I've not read How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker, but I do have The Language Instinct which I'd recommend, it includes a lot of Chomsky's theories but it's much simpler than his writing.

xou recommended The Fabric of the Universe by Brian Greene but I prefered The Elegant Universe, it's very easy to understand so a good place to start.

I have a humongous fucking list. it depends on what you want to learn or achieve. these are the ones I own right now: the origin of speices, the god delusion, consciousness explained, our friend the atom, the elegant universe, the fabric of the cosmos, phantoms in the brain, billions & billions, cosmos, the demon-haunted world, the pale blue dot, dmt: the spirit molecule (guess these count), TiHKAL & PiHKAL, flatland (sort of??), and a few others I'm forgetting. I also have a ton of socio/economic/political books which may overlap with science. an then I have an unbelievably large list of science books that I haven't necessarily read (these are to read), if you're interested in that.

Well I have pretty much covered a lot on evolution, with The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable and The Ancestors Tale. I haven't read much about anything else except for A Briefer History of Time. I am very interested in astronomy however and would like to perhaps read a bit more 'focused' book like for instance the formation of stars and planets etc. But I guess I would get more out of such a book if I read some introductory physics book first?

On the other hand consciousness explained sounds interesting...
So I guess the best answer to your question is a bit of everything, biology, astronomy, physics, neurology(except socio/economic/political science, had enough of those during uni), perhaps a bit more introductory type books first and then expanding into more focused books. I don't have a specific goal, or a plan of action(perhaps you can suggest one) I just want to learn as much as time will allow about the world :)

it all starts from math and physics. to understand star evolution, you have to understand chemistry and quantum mechanics. it really depends on how DEEPLY you want to learn those things. I haven't been motivated enough to go very far, but having a good handle on the basics of modern science is a useful thing. I quit literally two weeks into a physics course (school is annoying and lame).

our friend the atom is a great little book (though you will not find it in print) for learning the basics of chemistry, but I'm sure that's probably below your level. maybe you'd be more interested in picking up a textbook? the book "cosmos," the accompaniment to the tv series, has bits and pieces about astronomy, and so does his fiction book "contact," actually (that movie isn't bad either). neil tyson is one of the first scientists that comes to mind for popular astronomy. he has a good book called Death by Black Hole, and also a companion piece to the NOVA TV series Origins (with the same title), which is similar to Cosmos. aside from Hawking and Bryson, there's also Kaku (Hyperspace, Visions, Parallel Worlds, ...), Steven Weinberg's book The First Three Minutes, The Trouble with Physics (mentioned already) and in a similar vein Not Even Wrong, Warped Passages, Bad Astronomy, and the Ascent of Man (not sure if this was written before the series or in conjunction with), and maybe something from Karl Popper? There's another general, popular science book along the same line called The Canon that I don't know much about. Some of the popular Feynman stuff--Surely You're Joking; What Do You Care? Um.. Kip Thorne? George Gamow maybe. Also Physics for Future Presidents--I have not read the book, but I watched the lectures and they were pretty good (though quite basic), and speaking of lectures, if you're interested in that sort of thing, you should look into MIT's OpenCourseWare, and particularly the physics lectures by Walter G. Lewin.


And then there's the more serious stuff. Penrose (The Road to Reality, The Emperor's New Mind), QED (Feynman), "spacetime and geometry: an introduction to general relativity," "gravity: an introduction to einstein's general relativity" (two books I've read about, supposed to be more textbook-like). Two interesting books that are pretty specific but also fairly scientific: Rare Earth and Evolving the Alien. And maybe something by Neil Turok--last time I checked he hadn't written a lot, but he's a pretty respected modern physicist/astphysicist and has some interesting things to say for sure.

And then there's the mounds of science fiction and philosophy which can be informative even when it isn't technically accurate.

Wow thanks man, ill have a look into some of your suggestions =)

Why do people have a fixation on Einstein's theories of relativity? Instead of learning some basic physics stuff that would actually help them udnerstand everyday things like "Why is the sky blue", "What's a rainbow", "Why does ice melt under pressure of an ice skate", "How much do I weigh under water", etc. they want to learn about space curvature.

maybe because it revolutionised our understanding of the universe and shows us that our own experience is nothing but a tiny bit of the reality around us, and that our conclusions based on that experience are in general not valid at all.

"Our"? Have we taken a physics class together? I don't recognize you. Einstein has revolutionized your understanding of the universe - I am sorry, but what a pompous remark. Are you really familiar with his theories of relativity that they had this impact on you, spyteman?

Most things I see and look up how they work, be it evolution (how evolution 'decided' to create eyes and hands), mathematics (the wonders of complex analysis), history (that we do not learn from it) or trivia, have revolutionized my understanding, almost every day for the paste few years.

To single out Einstein is without a doubt meritorious, but I am terribly sorry,: Einstein would have deserved a better apologist if he ever needed one, than spyteman, who set out to shed light in our unworthy brains and on Einstein and his work.

Our as in mankind in general or in particular the ones who learned about this theory. I'm not sure whether it is an inner need of yours or just personal hate, but what makes you assume I was talking about me and you?

If you cannot see a difference between discovering so far unknown topics (let's call it classical physics) and breaking the fundaments of well established theories (special and general theory of relativity), then I can't be bothered going deeper into this. This is all I tried to imply with my first post, but as usual you rather decide to pick on me and be a dick with your well formulated, sarcastic reply. Therefore any discussion with you in a reasonable way is useless.

And in case you didn't know, I'm studying physics and are almost done with it, so I touched Einstein's theories quite a bit. Now fuck off you arrogant smartass.

Pluralis majestatis?

If you try just a bit harder to misread posts and sound smart, you'll reach Yeltsin level any minute.

it revolutionised our understanding of the universe

"Our"? Have we taken a physics class together? I don't recognize you.

Your attempts of sounding smart are getting dumber by the minute.

Now that really had to be pointed out!

The first two books that spring to mind that I loved are: The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA and The Blind Watchmaker.

Wasn't over keen on God Delusion thought it was quite stagnant at times. Just my observation as it was mentioned above.

That's freaking amazing.

More please!

lololololol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

Metamagical Themas is also pretty cool.

The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene
interesting read

The problem is that physics is too difficult even for physicists so the chance of having someone write about physics well is extremely slim. The best popular science books are those that will make you think hard instead of having you look at supernovae in 300+ colors in 3D.

The long introduction of the first Feynman lecture is such a rare case and should be published as small popular science booklet.

I'm not sure why you think physics is inherently more difficult that other academic disciplines? It doesn't really make any sense to claim that it's "too difficult" for physicists. Physicists understand current theories in their area of specialisation as well as academics in other areas. Of course every subject has unanswered questions, areas where we realise that we don't have good theories to explain observations and make accurate predictions, but that's hardly the exclusive preserve of physics.

You're right in that it's hard to write about the cutting edge in such a way to explain things to the layman. But for the most part popular science books don't need to do that... a good explanation of theories that are decades or centuries old is an interesting read to the unititiated.

Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
Niels Bohr.

If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it..
John Wheeler.

It is safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman.

Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.
Roger Penrose.

Those are experts in the field trying to be a bit funny and show off a little... "hey look - we grok this confusing stuff".

oh cmon :P

uve obviously been reading the wrong books.

anyways id add beyond numeracy to the list. its essentially meant as an intro to a variety of math topics for the mathematically illiterate. but the way the topics are presented makes it interesting for the geeky as well.

'interesting' - a twin sister of the word 'apathic', by the way. Why not use the word 'entertaining'.? As if science was made for people who consume it with books. If you can't be more specific than 'interesting' you're missing something.

I enjoyed

The User Illusion, by Tor Norretranders


link

http://www.nehrlich.com/book/userillusion.html

i read 'Brocas Brain' by Carl Sagan a while ago. Had lots of interesting things in it. It relates to astronomy but in a rather broad way.

It may be a bit dated nowadays however, i still recommend it though.

As the wiki page says, its not a strictly scientific book but Sagan rocks so its a good read anyway.