Stuff of Thought and Why People Believe Weird Things

Currently reading another Pinker, "The Stuff of Thought". In the 4th chapter, very language oriented now but expect to head toward cognitive neuroscience later. Also reading "Why People Believe Weird Things" by skeptic Shermer. Well done, good illustrations, not at all overbearing. Have Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth" on my Kindle to read next.

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

On recent cruise to the Baltic, found Brian Greene's latest

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

in the ship's library. Good read, didn't quite finish, will get from our local library. One chapter was titled "Is This Science". String theory sounds fascinating but no test has been devised yet.

Am rereading "Consilience" again. Still very enlightening, pertinent, nearly 15 years after publication. Many of Wilson's conjectures about the direction of research and what would be found are on the mark. Wonderful prose, clear writing, a delight for those of us encumbered with a scientific education.

Just started "The Stuff of Thought" by S. Pinker as my next educating  read. Looks like another eye opener like his "How the Mind Works", and 'The Blank Slate"

D.S. Wilson, Jared Diamond, and Freakonomics

After reading Evolution for Everyone, I took D S Wilson's rec to read "Guns, Germs and Steel", by Diamond, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Wish I had been taught history like that. Ran into Freakonomics in our public library, and quickly read it, and the follow on, Super Freakonomics. All of this fitting together, and then on to DS Wilson's The Neighborhood Project. Now I want to take the EOS courses myself, and hope my grandchildren will go to an EOS school like Binghamton U.

Reading list number 1

Reading list I made up for a friend

Philosophy of Science 

Consilience                         The Idea that all knowledge is one thread

Conjectures and Refutations   Popper - centrality of falsifiability to science

Evolution for Everyone            D.S. Wilson -  Lots of fun, blue collar science

Biology 

Why Evolution is True            J Coyne  - better than Dawkins

The Selfish Gene                   Dawkins - start of my interest in genetics

The Blind Watchmaker           Dawkins - needed to understand appearance of design arguments

The Ancestor's Tale                Dawkins - encyclopedic view of the tree of life, long, with fascinating details

Endless Forms Most Beautiful S. Collins - new science of evo devo must read to understand gene expression

Birth of the Mind                     G.Marcus - how tiny # genes creates the complexity of human thought

Psychology and Brain Science

How the Mind Works               S. Pinker - research psychologist who writes very clearly and entertainingly

The Blank Slate                      S Pinker - excellent exposition of nature vs nurture

Modern Cosmology

A Universe from Nothing           Krauss - wow! spontaneous generation of multiple universes, led to by data

Knocking on HeavensDoor        Randall - Why we built the Large Hadron Collider, and the technology involved

The Grand Design                    Hawking - Brilliant. Thought I understood it while reading it. Not so sure now.

For Children and Young Adults

The Magic of Reality                 Dawkins - delightful thought experiments for young adults

I will comment on some of them individually eventually. What do you think?

Opening statement

I hope this will be a place for some of my friends who are curious about a variety of things, such as the nature of reality, evolutionary biology, cosmology, etc. will interact. I plan to add book recommendations and observations irregularly, and hope that you feel free to comment.