15 Best Science Books Of All Time
source link: https://www.cantorsparadise.com/15-best-science-books-of-all-time-2193cf1f19cb
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
15 Best Science Books Of All Time
Books that everyone must read at least once in their lives
Scientific literacy is important, not just for the people in the science community, but for everyone. It makes you look at and understand the world from a different perspective. I’ve grown up reading hundreds of science books with topics ranging from quantum mechanics to neurobiology, from artificial intelligence to mathematics. Every book had something of an impact left upon me that ignited the enthusiasm for science but some books were exceptional and remarkable, in terms of literature, simplicity, and elegance. In this article, I have listed 15 such brilliant pieces of scientific literature that everyone must read.
1) A Brief History Of Time
There should be no boundary to human endeavor.
Author: Stephen Hawking
One of the most popular science books ever written, Stephen Hawking explains multiple aspects of theoretical cosmology and the universe in an extremely elegant manner.
2) Cosmos
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
Author: Carl Sagan
In this 1980 book, Dr. Sagan reflects his views from biological to astronomical matters. He explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science.
3) Sapiens
You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Explores how biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”
4) The Elegant Universe
The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.
Author: Brian Greene
In this book, Dr. Greene tries to explain how the universe is comprised of 11 dimensions.
5) The Origin Of Species
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Author: Charles Darwin
Scientific literature by Darwin is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.
6) Physics Of the Impossible
The physicist Niels Bohr was fond of saying, “Prediction is very hard to do. Especially about the future.
Author: Michio Kaku
Dr. Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science fiction might well become commonplace in the future.
7) The Selfish Gene
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish…
Author: Richard Dawkins
Dawkins brilliantly reformulates the theory of natural selection and explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene.
8) Seven brief lessons on physics
Genius hesitates.
Author: Carlo Rovelli
Rovelli briskly explains Einstein’s general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, and the complex architecture of the universe.
9) The Language Instinct
Humans are so innately hardwired for language that they can no more suppress their ability to learn and use language than they can suppress the instinct to pull a hand back from a hot surface.
Author: Steven Pinker
In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved.
10) The Feynman Lectures on Physics
It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with the experiment, it’s wrong.
Author: Richard Feynman
Based on some lectures by ‘the great explainer’ Richard Feynman, the lectures were presented before undergraduate students at the Caltech, during 1961–1963. The book’s co-authors are Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands.
11) The Emperor’s New Mind
The Emperor’s New MindThe viewpoint is that it is simply the logical structure of the algorithm that is significant for the ‘mental state’ it is supposed to represent, the particular physical embodiment of that algorithm being entirely irrelevant.
Author: Dr. Roger Penrose
The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics is a 1989 book by the mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose.
12) Pale Blue Dot
We were wanderers from the beginning.
Author: Dr. Carl Sagan
Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond.
13) A Short History of Nearly Everything
There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally, they credit the wrong person.
Author: Bill Bryson
Bryson confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand — and, if possible, answer — the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves
14) Women In Science
The main stumbling block in the way of any progress is and always has been unimpeachable tradition.
Author: Rachel Ignotofsky
Women in Science highlights the contributions of fifty notable women to the fields of STEM from the ancient to the modern world.
15) Gödel, Escher, Bach:
Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.
Author: Douglas Hofstadter
A 1979 book exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence.
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK