Posted: 4/13/2011 12:36 PM
Post subject: The best popular science books?
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Kyrsimys
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Hello everyone! I'm currently conducting a study for my MA thesis, and I've received a lot of help from an upper secondary school teacher, who in return asked me to find her some good popular science books. I immediately thought of this forum, as there seem to be a lot of people here who read a lot and are interested in science, so I would like to hear your recommendations. Basically I'm looking for books that are written well (in an entertaining and interesting fashion) and are not way too advanced or technical; books that have opened your eyes or completely revolutionized the way you think about certain things. Anything that's really changed you. There are of course lists like this on the internet but I would really like to hear your reviews of the best popular science books from all areas of science. I myself read a very good book a while back called The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene. I've never been much of a science nerd and the book really made me understand why the idea of quantum mechanics is so revolutionary in the world of physics and what it's actually all about. It's written very well: it's understandable to anyone who has a grasp of very basic mathematical concepts, but it still moves forward with a nice pace and doesn't patronize. It cleared up many things for me that I have found confusing about relativity and spacetime. I definitely recommend it to anyone who hasn't studied physics but is interested in things like the theory of general and special relativity, quantum mechanics, the big bang and string theory. At the moment I also have Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat on my shelf but I haven't had the time to read them yet.
Posted: 4/13/2011 12:40 PM
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Tombad
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Everything by Simon Singh. He uses a lot of funny anecdotes and stories to spice up the science content (which isn't that deep but gets the job done). My favorite from him is the Codebook, which is about cryptography. The collaboration book on alternative medicine is a bit weaker but recommendable nonetheless. For example, codebook contains the basis on how ciphers work and so forth, but due to their nature the history is littered with stories on real world usage of cryptography.
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Posted: 4/13/2011 12:44 PM
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Warp
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I liked The Greatest Show On Earth by Dawkins. I have also heard good things about The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, and have actually ordered it (but it still hasn't arrived and hence I still haven't had an opportunity to read it).
Posted: 4/13/2011 4:03 PM
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p4wn3r
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The Feynman Lectures on Physics, by Richard Feynman -- Physics (duh) The Lady and the Tiger, by Raymond Smullyan -- Logic Introduction to Algorithms, by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein -- Computer Science
Posted: 4/13/2011 6:15 PM
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Guns, germs, and steel - Jared Diamond. Why didn't the native americans build ships, invent gunpowder and invade Europe in 1492, give us deadly diseases and enslave everybody who was left? The blank slate - Steven Pinker. What is nature and what is nurture? Trick or treatment - Singh & Ernst. What is the scientific backing of various alternative medicines? Very informative and good to have read if you dislike mumbo-jumbo nonscientific woo-woo. I am currently reading The greatest show on earth by Richard Dawkins and enjoying it.
Posted: 4/13/2011 9:50 PM
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Mukki
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Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku is an interesting read. He looks into various technologies that we now consider impossible (i.e. invisibiility, time travel, perpetual motion) and categorises them according to how likely they are to come to fruition. He explains various ways in which they may be possible. Why does E=mc2? by Brian Cox is a nice beginners guide to relativity. Cox attempts to follow Einstein's thought process to demonstrate how he arrived at the theory. I'd second Guns, Germs and Steel as I enjoyed it, though I'm not sure if anthropology is what your friend is looking for. I also enjoyed A Brief History of Time, but it may be a little to complex for the total lay person.
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Posted: 4/14/2011 4:57 AM
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Kyrsimys
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Thanks for all the suggestions so far. Dawkins and Feynman are already on my list of books to check out and several people have recommended Guns, germs and steel as well, so that's definitely going on there. Singh's books and Cox's book about relativity sound very interesting (well anything about relativity sounds interesting I guess). The Carl Sagan book also sounds interesting, and the topic is especially well suited for upper secondary school students who haven't really received any education on the scientific method yet. A book with a similar theme but one that concentrates on psychology as a science was also recommended to me yesterday: Keith E. Stanovich's How to Think Straight about Psychology. Keep those recommendations coming!
Posted: 4/14/2011 6:28 AM
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rhebus
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I've heard very good things about marcus chown - I haven't read him, but I've seen him talk (at an event where simon singh was also talking) and out he's half as good a writer as a speaker then his books will be brilliant. Bad science by ben goldacre is a perennial favourite. A bit more focus on medicine, quacks, how people misrepresent science and how science can actually determine something to be true. In a similar but more maths focused vein, there's innumeracy by john allen paulos. A good but heavy tome is godel, escher, bach by douglas hofstadter - it's very difficult to describe because it visits so many topics, such as genetics, fractals, canons and fugues, mathematical logic, and many others; it unites these into an overall theme of symmetry and self-similar patterns.
Posted: 4/14/2011 3:12 PM
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Titus_Kwok
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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell is an interesting look into how the brain makes decisions and why some of them are wrong.
Posted: 4/15/2011 12:59 PM
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nfq
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the secret doctrine by helena blavatsky. it made me realize a few things about gravity and anthropology.
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Posted: 4/15/2011 2:08 PM
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Warp
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nfq wrote:
the secret doctrine by helena blavatsky. it made me realize a few things about gravity and anthropology.
Popular science does not mean the same thing as pseudoscience.
Posted: 4/15/2011 10:15 PM
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mr_roberts_z
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How about The Road to Reality? Also, if you like Briane Greene and the Fabric of the Cosmos, you'd probably like The Elegant Universe. If you like A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Thorne is often considered a kind of companion classic.
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Posted: 4/16/2011 7:24 AM
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Warp
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Btw, one book I was really disappointed with is The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Firstly, it's really short. It's thin, uses a big font, large marginals and large line spacing, and lots of full-page decorative images with little or no informative content. It's more like a longish essay than a book. Secondly, it contained little information I didn't know already (and I'm no physicist). Thirdly, about the only thing that I wasn't acquinted with, and which the book heavily promotes, is the M-theory, which I felt was presented without too much justification. AFAIK the M-theory, like all the string theories it's composed of, has little or no predictive power, and no experimental evidence to speak of. Presenting it as the answer to everything felt quite unjustified. Fourthly, it was full of really lame and unfunny jokes. And I'm not exaggerating a bit.
Posted: 4/16/2011 1:14 PM
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nfq
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Warp wrote:
Popular science does not mean the same thing as pseudoscience.
*rolling on the floor without laughing*
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Posted: 4/16/2011 1:43 PM
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Warp
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nfq wrote:
Warp wrote:
Popular science does not mean the same thing as pseudoscience.
*rolling on the floor without laughing*
Could you please explain?
Posted: 4/16/2011 1:45 PM
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>the secret doctrine by helena blavatsky. From reading a short summary of that book, it seems it's about things that are not testable and cannot be disproven, such as personal revelation, that planets and stars are conscious etc., in other words: not science, and not the point of this topic. Okay, another suggestion, to add something to the discussion: Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner. Actually mostly about statistics and not that much about economics. How can we tell from match results that sumo wrestlers cheat? How does laws on abortion affect crime rate? The book is a bit uneven, if found the two chapters about the questions I mentioned the most interesting.
Posted: 4/16/2011 2:31 PM
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nfq
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Warp wrote:
Could you please explain?
It's hard to explain but I'll try: I didn't agree that it was pseudoscience, but I didn't want to start discussing why (since it's somewhat off topic and all), so I became psychotic and just started rolling on the floor. I also found your statement slightly hilarious for some reason, probably because you always seem so serious and straight forward, so I started rolling on the floor, but I still couldn't laugh because I didn't agree with it. It can also be understood better if you imagine that you travelled back in time and tried to tell the people something useful, but they would never believe you, it could after many attempts cause a similar "rolling on floor without laughing" reaction, because it would be funny that they don't believe in what is true, but at the same time it would be a little sad, which would make it hard to laugh. So yeah... it has a quite complicated meaning to it. Much more complicated than a simple "rofl". But it could be summarized as an unsuccessful rofl. Writing *rolling on the floor without laughing* is also more funny than a rofl, so it can cause people (or at least me) to rofl.
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Posted: 4/16/2011 2:44 PM
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Warp
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I think that what you are engaging in is called "psychological projection": You are attributing to others a characteristic that you are uncomfortable with (in this case, being ridiculous and highly amusing). This is a psychological defense mechanism that helps you avoid admitting your own flaws, by attributing the flaws to others.
Posted: 4/17/2011 4:41 PM
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rhebus
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Truncated wrote:
Okay, another suggestion, to add something to the discussion: Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner. Actually mostly about statistics and not that much about economics. How can we tell from match results that sumo wrestlers cheat? How does laws on abortion affect crime rate? The book is a bit uneven, if found the two chapters about the questions I mentioned the most interesting.
disagree that it's not about economics. Economics encompasses the study of people's behaviour under various sets of incentives - which is why nash got the nobel prize in economics for game theory.