For as long as I can remember, I have passionately wanted to understand both the nature of the universe, what it is that is of most value in life, and how it is to be achieved. When a child, I wanted above all to understand the nature of the world around me; later, when a young adult, I suddenly discovered the fundamental significance of the question: What is of most value in life, and how is it to be achieved? I became a lecturer in Philosophy of Science at University College London, where I was able to devote myself to these issues.
I wrote...
The Comprehensibility of the Universe: A New Conception of Science
I found this book just about the most dazzling and gripping book I had ever come across about science. It kept on opening up new vistas as I read on. Full of surprises and unexpected dramas, it cast a vivid light on a wide range of issues. I finished it breathless with admiration.
It is about photosynthesis, the process whereby plants “eat” sunlight to form oxygen and sugar from carbon dioxide and water. This process is basic to almost all life on Earth. The book is about the development of photosynthesis on Earth and also about the development of our scientific knowledge about it.
From acclaimed science journalist Oliver Morton comes Eating the Sun, a fascinating, lively, profound look at photosynthesis, nature's greatest miracle. From the physics, chemistry, and cellular biology that make photosynthesis possible, to the quirky and competitive scientists who first discovered the beautifully honed mechanisms of photosynthesis, to the modern energy crisis we face today, Eating the Sun offers a complete biography of the earth through the lens of this common but crucial process.
I regard this book as perhaps the greatest book about the nature of science ever published. In it, Popper spells out his dramatic view that science proceeds by putting forward bold, imaginative guesses, which are then subjected to ferocious attempts at empirical refutation. When these conjectured theories are refuted, scientists are forced to think up a better conjectural theory–and that is how science makes progress.
In this book, Popper shows how this dramatic account of how science proceeds by a process of conjecture and refutation has implications for fields beyond science, such as philosophy, in that it implies that, whatever we are doing, our best hope of success in solving our problems is to consider possible solutions and subject them to ferocious criticism.
Conjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.
This book also gives a vivid and dramatic account of the way science proceeds, but one that is strikingly different from that of Popper’s account. According to Kuhn, much of science is what he calls “normal” science: a basic theory, or “paradigm,” is taken for granted, and scientists seek to increase its experimental range and accuracy. But then “anomalies” begin to accumulate; crisis sets in until a new paradigm is proposed, a revolution occurs, the old paradigm is defeated, and a new phase of normal science begins.
I loved the drama Kuhn finds in this procedure of normal and revolutionary science, his depiction of the tragedy of those scientists left behind who remain devoted to a paradigm that has been rejected and superseded. There is no doubt that both normal and revolutionary science are features of science as they actually exist.
A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were-and still are. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. And fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach. With "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Kuhn challenged long-standing…
What I love about this book is its clarity and honesty. It is a work of philosophy that has nothing to do with the fashionable task of analyzing concepts at the time of its publication. It sets out a clear view about the nature of the world–what it is that science is telling us about the nature of the world–and discusses problems that this view gives rise to with admirable clarity and honesty.
And the author makes a vital contribution in connection with his discussion of the nature of sensations and consciousness. Above all, I admire the patent honesty of this book so much, the capacity of the author to pursue his basic idea wherever it may lead, to the ends of the earth, with scrupulous honesty and integrity.
Originally published in 1963. In an introductory chapter the author argues that philosophy ought to be more than the art of clarifying thought and that it should concern itself with outlining a scientifically plausible world view. Early chapters deal with phenomenalism and the reality of theoretical entities, and with the relation between the physical and biological sciences. Free will, issues of time and space and man's place in nature are covered in later chapters.
I love how this book tells a dramatic story about dark corruption at the heart of modern science set after the Second World War, especially in the USA. Physicists allowed politicians to think that the vast sums of money they gave to physics would result in weapons even more terrible than the atomic bomb. But actually, the money was spent on particle colliders, experimental devices that had nothing to do with weapons of war.
Scientific funding was based on a quagmire of duplicity and deception, and Greenberg tells this story vividly and grippingly. I first read the book with the excitement that one might read a thrilling political thriller. A political/intellectual scandal is revealed.
This work examines the place of science in American politics and society. Dispelling the myth of scientific purity and detachment, Daniel S. Greenberg documents the political processes that underpinned government funding of science from the 1940s to the 1970s. While the book's hard-hitting approach earned praise from a broad audience, it drew harsh fire from many scientists, who did not relish their turn under the microscope. The fact that this dispute is so reminiscent of today's acrimonious "Science Wars" demonstrates that although science has changed a great deal since "The Politics of Pure Science" first appeared, the politics of science…
This book spells out a new vision of both the nature of the universe and the nature of science. In it, I show that, in order to make sense of science, we must see science as having established that the universe is physically comprehensible. It is such that a unified physical “theory of everything” exists to be discovered that is true and, together with initial conditions, in principle predicts all physical phenomena (possibly in a probabilistic way).
Scientific knowledge includes a hierarchy of metaphysical theses about the nature of the universe–theses that become less and less substantial as one goes up the hierarchy. Those low down in the hierarchy are revised as science makes progress, but the thesis of comprehensibility persists throughout these revisions.
I am a Harvard- and MIT-trained physician-scientist, and I am drawn to research problems that bridge the basic and the practical – how a better understanding of cells and tissues can inform new therapies for cancer and other diseases. As children, we are all scientists – mini-hypothesis generators trying to make sense of the world. I suppose I never outgrew that curiosity. My list of best science books credits writers who bring to life the excitement that comes from looking at the natural world in a new way, a spirit that I try to emulate in my own writing. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
Everybody knows that all animals—bats, bears, sharks, ponies, and people—start out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?
FROM ONE CELL is a dive inside the cell and its evolutionary prerogatives to explain how these "endless forms most beautiful," as Charles Darwin called them, come about. Along the way, we learn about the scientific process, filled as it is with serendipity, as the story is told through the eyes of the scientists who informed…
From One Cell: A Journey into Life's Origins and the Future of Medicine
Every animal on Earth begins life as a single cell. From this humble origin, the nascent creature embarks on a risky journey fraught with opportunities for disaster-yet with astounding regularity, it reaches its destination intact. From One Cell illuminates this epic transformation-still one of nature's most mysterious feats-to show where we all come from and where we're going.
Through the eyes of the scientists unraveling the secrets of development, we see how all the information needed to build a human fits into a fertilised egg, and how the trillions of cells that emerge know what to become and where to…
