Here are 100 books that A Tapestry of Values fans have personally recommended if you like
A Tapestry of Values.
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My father was a NASA scientist during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, so while most people knew the Space Race as a spectacle of thundering rockets and grainy lunar footage, I remember the very human costs and excitement of scientific progress. My space-cadet years come in snippets–the emotional break in my dad’s voice when Neil Armstrong hopped around the Moon; the strange peace I felt as I bobbed on a surfboard and watched another Saturn 1b flame into the sky. Later, as a journalist and author, I would see that such moments are couched in societal waves as profound and mysterious as the wheeling of hundreds of starlings overhead.
On the surface, this seems a dry treatise on the process of scientific change, but as you get into it, you encounter again and again the stories of hardheaded researchers convinced that the world explained by current theory just doesn’t make sense and shows how they were driven, often reluctantly, to make sense of things. Priestley’s and Lavoisier’s experiments are included with many others but always set within the framework of a discipline in a “crisis” that needs to be resolved.
The personal costs are not neglected–ridicule, isolation from the accepted “establishment,” sometimes far worse. Scientific progress is often portrayed as a triumph of individual imagination confirmed by wider testing and collaboration. Kuhn’s work took that self-serving myth and tossed it out the window.
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…
I’ve been a philosopher before I knew what philosophers were: asking questions to challenge the starting points for conversations. My biggest pet peeve has always been people who were sure they entirely understood something. While scientists conduct science to help learn about the world, philosophers of science like me study science to try to figure out how it works, why (and when) it’s successful, and how it relates to human concerns and society. Humans ultimately invent science, and I think it’s fascinating to consider how its features relate to our interests and foibles and how it’s so successful at producing knowledge and practical abilities.
The Vienna Circle was a group of polymaths—primarily scientists and philosophers—who held weekly meetings in Vienna between the World Wars. This book is by far the best retelling of their story, and it’s fascinating.
While their names aren’t well known, their work had tremendous influence. They prominently shaped the reception and understanding of Einstein’s new theories of relativity, began the use of simple images to communicate information without words, and introduced logical developments that eventually led to computers and other technology.
From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history
On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelboeck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelboeck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle-an influential group…
I’ve been a philosopher before I knew what philosophers were: asking questions to challenge the starting points for conversations. My biggest pet peeve has always been people who were sure they entirely understood something. While scientists conduct science to help learn about the world, philosophers of science like me study science to try to figure out how it works, why (and when) it’s successful, and how it relates to human concerns and society. Humans ultimately invent science, and I think it’s fascinating to consider how its features relate to our interests and foibles and how it’s so successful at producing knowledge and practical abilities.
This book takes what seems to be an incredibly basic feature of the world—temperature—and shows how a tremendous amount of scientific ingenuity and choices made over two centuries contributed to defining and measuring temperatures.
Showing how concepts taken for granted today emerged over time and could have been different helps reveal how little of what we know comes from direct observation.
What is temperature, and how can we measure it correctly? These may seem like simple questions, but the most renowned scientists struggled with them throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In Inventing Temperature, Chang examines how scientists first created thermometers; how they measured temperature beyond the reach of standard thermometers; and how they managed to assess the reliability and accuracy of these instruments without a circular reliance on the instruments themselves.
In a discussion that brings together the history of science with the philosophy of science, Chang presents the simple yet challenging epistemic and technical questions about these instruments, and…
I’ve been a philosopher before I knew what philosophers were: asking questions to challenge the starting points for conversations. My biggest pet peeve has always been people who were sure they entirely understood something. While scientists conduct science to help learn about the world, philosophers of science like me study science to try to figure out how it works, why (and when) it’s successful, and how it relates to human concerns and society. Humans ultimately invent science, and I think it’s fascinating to consider how its features relate to our interests and foibles and how it’s so successful at producing knowledge and practical abilities.
I love how this book broadens our ideas about who conducts science and for what purposes. When people think of science, they think of scientists. But this book explores scientific research partly conducted by non-scientists, sometimes called “citizen science.”
Through fascinating examples of environmental research, the authors explore the challenges and opportunities of citizen science to improve the environment and initiate social change.
Longlisted for the Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)
Citizen science-research involving nonprofessionals in the research process-has attracted both strong enthusiasts and detractors. Many environmental professionals, activists, and scholars consider citizen science part of their toolkit for addressing environmental challenges. Critics, however, contend that it represents a corporate takeover of scientific priorities. In this timely book, two sociologists move beyond this binary debate by analyzing the tensions and dilemmas that citizen science projects commonly face. Key lessons are drawn from case studies where citizen scientists have investigated the impact of shale oil and gas, nuclear…
I’m a science and technology journalist who has reported on neurotech and bioelectricity for over 15 years, for publications includingNew Scientist, IEEE Spectrum and Quartz. After a formative experience in a DARPA brain-stimulation experiment, I began to dig into the history and science of bioelectricity, trying to understand both the science at the level of membrane biophysics, and the history and psychology of how biology lost custody of electricity. My resulting book is an effort to create a repository of the real, rigorous studies that have advanced our understanding of this fascinating science at an accelerating rate in the past 20 to 40 years - and what the new science means about the future.
They say the law is perpetually at least five years behind new developments in technology.
Nowhere is it more important to reverse this phenomenon than in neurotechnology. We may not understand the brain, but that hasn’t stopped neurotech startups and big tech companies from trying to eavesdrop on and interpret its bioelectric signals.
Farahany, a bioethics professor at Duke University, says that this market is expected to reach $21 billion by 2026 largely because it will be a boon for surveillance capitalism. The devices don’t even have to actually tell you what a person is thinking or feeling for the information to be used that way by companies and governments.
People become credulous when AI tells them something, whether it’s a policing or recidivism algorithms. Wearable says you are about to commit a crime or have an affair?
Farahany makes an impassioned argument to build the legal framework that will…
A new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared for what comes next?
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of this possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for…
I’ve been an astronomer since I was young and lucky enough to make a living at it. I ventured into space mining when I found Mining the Sky. I started doing some calculations using the newest research. What I found was surprising and ignited a new passion in me that has led me from asteroids to the Moon to the ends of the Solar System and from pure astrophysics into questions of law, government, and ethics. Now, I write almost entirely about our future in space.
After I got all fired up about space mining with the other books, Erika Nesvold raised all sorts of questions that I hadn’t considered. What sort of “world” do I want to see when people expand across the solar system?
After reading her book, I realize that despite my urge to just get on and do it, a Wild West in space isn’t what we’re after.
Can we do better in space than we’ve done here on Earth?
We’ve pinpointed the destination, refined the technology, designed the habitat, outfitted our space residents. Are we forgetting something? A timely reminder that it’s not just rocket science, this thought-provoking book explores the all-too-human issues raised by the prospect of settling in outer space. It’s worth remembering, Erika Nesvold suggests, that in making new worlds, we don’t necessarily leave our earthly problems behind. Accordingly, her work highlights the complex ethical challenges that accompany any other-worldly venture—questions about the environment, labor rights, and medical ethics, among others.
Almost 20 years ago, I committed to investing all of my money–starting with my cash–in ways that align with my values. It’s been a long and arduous journey, even with the help of financial advisors. When I retired, I took control of my money and realized investing this way does not have to be that hard. Moreover, most women want to invest in their values, but no one is helping them. So, I wrote a book to share the knowledge I’ve gained over 40 years as an investor. Later, I co-founded Invest for Better, a non-profit that puts women into investment clubs to help them become confident, values-aligned investors.
This small, beautifully laid out book was published a few years after mine–and it does a great job of introducing readers to a range of topics related to values-aligned investing.
It lays out the case for values-aligned investing and then gives you a few pages on topics as diverse as bonds and cryptocurrency. The highly visual nature of the book makes this a quick and engaging read
What if building your own personal wealth didn't have to come at the expense of the planet?
Put your money where your mouth is when it comes to handling your finances and join the Female Invest trio on a mission to investigate sustainable stocks and funds, angel investing, and empowering initiatives-for both you and the planet.
Cutting through the noise, this trusted resource will rationalize the vast scope of the term "sustainable investing" and consider how investments, funds, stocks, and shares can be responsible, ethical, green, and impactful-enabling you to partake in a truly circular economy. Ditching the jargon shrouding…
As a college freshman, I was profoundly affected by a mesmerizing, Pulitzer-Prize-winning professor and Lincoln scholar, David Herbert Donald, who became an important mentor. I was drawn to Lincoln as source of personal inspiration, someone who triumphed over adversity, one who despite a childhood of emotional malnutrition and grinding poverty, despite a lack of formal education, despite a series of career failures, despite a woe-filled marriage, despite a tendency to depression, despite a painful midlife crisis, despite the early death of his mother and his siblings as well as of his sweetheart and two of his four children, became a model of psychological maturity, moral clarity, and unimpeachable integrity.
In this beautifully written study of Lincoln’s pre-presidential years, the political ethicist William Lee Miller, a warm and generous friend as well as a gifted scholar, argued that to “appraise Lincoln fairly” one “should not compare him to unattached abolitionists in Massachusetts or to anyone a century and a half later” but rather to “other engaged politicians in the Old Northwest in the 1850s,” who were far more skeptical about racial equality than Lincoln was.
Miller observed that Lincoln was consistently “cordial and welcoming in his treatment of individual African-Americans,” but that he was more than that. In Miller’s words, Lincoln’s interaction with those Blacks demonstrated “a racially inclusive egalitarianism.” Miller’s companion volume, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman is an equally insightful examination of Lincoln’s presidential years.
William Lee Miller’s ethical biography is a fresh, engaging telling of the story of Lincoln’s rise to power. Through careful scrutiny of Lincoln’s actions, speeches, and writings, and of accounts from those who knew him, Miller gives us insight into the moral development of a great politician — one who made the choice to go into politics, and ultimately realized that vocation’s fullest moral possibilities.
As Lincoln’s Virtues makes refreshingly clear, Lincoln was not born with his face on Mount Rushmore; he was an actual human being making choices — moral choices — in a real world. In an account…
Like everyone else, I have life-long experience of caring and not caring for things; being sometimes careful and other times careless. Communication has been my central interest as a historical sociologist, and I’ve been considering its relationship to care (attachment, affection, worry, and burden) and security. I have always liked the word care, employing it often in the sense of warm attachment, but I have been looking at how care can at times enact control, violence, or abandonment.
This book challenged my thinking about the implications of compassion taking a decisive role in policy.
Not undermining the import of compassion or empathy, it reveals how these moral sentiments are taking precedence over formal rights in decisions about asylum for refugees, aid, access to health or mental health care, and even justifying a military action.
Under the emergent logic of humanitarian reason, structural inequities and violence are easily rendered invisible as the most poignantly shaped public narratives of suffering gain sway over historical conditions of structural injustice and dominance. Fassin draws upon fieldwork in South Africa, Venezuela, Palestine, and Iraq, as well as policy in France, showing how the logic of humanitarian reason can abandon those who are positioned in the most precarious conditions.
In the face of the world's disorders, moral concerns have provided a powerful ground for developing international as well as local policies. Didier Fassin draws on case materials from France, South Africa, Venezuela, and Palestine to explore the meaning of humanitarianism in the contexts of immigration and asylum, disease and poverty, disaster and war. He traces and analyzes recent shifts in moral and political discourse and practices - what he terms "humanitarian reason" - and shows in vivid examples how humanitarianism is confronted by inequality and violence. Deftly illuminating the tensions and contradictions in humanitarian government, he reveals the ambiguities…
As a physician, medicine is my job. But along the way, I wondered how medicine got to where it is now–like really wondered. I wondered to the point that I was reading the original treatises written by 18th-century physicians. I started publishing research on medical history and giving presentations at medical conferences. I’d like to think this helps me be a better doctor by broadening my perspective on the healthcare industry. But at the very least, I’ve found these books enjoyable and compelling. I hope you enjoy them, too!
This remarkable story illustrates that if something in healthcare sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I had to stop listening to it before going to sleep because the compelling narrative was keeping me up at night.
The author seamlessly combined this compelling narrative with exceptional research behind the Food and Drug Administration, the heroine who prevented thalidomide approval in the United States, and the catastrophic effects of a pharmaceutical company using loopholes.
Longlisted for the Andrew 2024 Carnegie Medal for Non-Fiction
The shocking, never-before-told story of America's thalidomide victims
In Germany on Christmas Day 1956 a baby girl was born without ears. She was the first victim of the notorious thalidomide epidemic. There would be over 10,000 more across 46 countries.
For years the world believed the United States had avoided the catastrophe. After Frances Kelsey at the Food and Drug Administration became suspicious of the dangers of thalidomide in 1960, she led a successful fight to block its commercial approval.
But now, having probed government and corporate archives and interviewed hundreds…
