Here are 65 books that Cycles of Contingency fans have personally recommended if you like
Cycles of Contingency.
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I ‘pick the brains’ of expert software developers to understand what makes them expert. I’ve spent decades studying how professional software developers reason and communicate about design and problem solving. Informed by the seminal books I’ve highlighted (among many others), my research is grounded in empirical studies of professionals in industry and draws on cognitive and social theory. Observing, talking to, and working with hundreds of professional software developers in organisations ranging from start-ups to the world’s major software companies has exposed actionable insights into the thinking that distinguishes high-performing teams.
In terms of conveying how to convey information (not just data) visually, Tufte is the undoubted master.
This book is full of pithy examples, with clear insights about what works, what doesn’t, and why. I came across it when I was trying to understand why I was disgruntled with so many graphical representations – and Tufte provided useful clarity about my niggles.
(N.B. I had to pick just one of his titles for this list – but I’d recommend his other books as well.)
The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relational graphics, data maps, multivariate designs. Detection of graphical deception: design variation vs. data variation. Sources of deception. Aesthetics and data graphical displays. This is the second edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. This edition provides excellent color reproductions of…
Even though I am a scientist who has written over 130 scientific articles, I have a longstanding passion for scientific books that are written for non-scientists. I love books about science, no matter how distant they are from my area of expertise. To me, the best science books convey the excitement of science and scientific thinking in an accessible manner, but without pandering or dumbing things down. My favorite books tackle big ideas and respect the reader’s intelligence. My choices here reflect my core interests in biology, evolution, and behavior—and the aesthetics of science, too. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
If you are interested in understanding the roots of human invention, this is your book. Too often we attribute inventions—and the creative spark underlying them — to a mysterious force or a special gift. In this book, Henry Petroski, an engineer, shows us the process by which inventions come about. That process is an evolutionary one that often relies on trial and error. Petroski illustrates his ideas and develops his themes using the most mundane of objects, such forks, paper clips, and zippers. If even such seemingly simple objects evolved, what must that say about computers, rockets, and even humans?
How did the table fork acquire a fourth tine? What advantage does the Phillips-head screw have over its single-grooved predecessor? Why does the paper clip look the way it does? What makes Scotch tape Scotch?
In this delightful book Henry, Petroski takes a microscopic look at artifacts that most of us count on but rarely contemplate, including such icons of the everyday as pins, Post-its, and fast-food "clamshell" containers. At the same time, he offers a convincing new theory of technological innovation as a response to the perceived failures of existing products—suggesting that irritation, and not necessity, is the mother…
Even though I am a scientist who has written over 130 scientific articles, I have a longstanding passion for scientific books that are written for non-scientists. I love books about science, no matter how distant they are from my area of expertise. To me, the best science books convey the excitement of science and scientific thinking in an accessible manner, but without pandering or dumbing things down. My favorite books tackle big ideas and respect the reader’s intelligence. My choices here reflect my core interests in biology, evolution, and behavior—and the aesthetics of science, too. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
The diverse, complex world of animals can seem chaotic. But we can bring order to this chaos by looking for grand principles that simplify and explain. One such grand principle concerns the foundational role of body size in shaping animal biology: From our skeletons to our use of energy to our longevity, size matters! And no one was better able to explain the importance of size in simple, straightforward terms than the inimitable physiologist, Knut Schmidt-Nielsen. This is a must-have book for anyone with even a passing interest in the diversity of life on our planet.
This book is about the importance of animal size. We tend to think of animal function in chemical terms and talk of water, salts, proteins, enzymes, oxygen, energy, and so on. We should not forget, however, that physical laws are equally important, for they determine rates of diffusion and heat transfer, transfer of force and momentum, the strength of structures, the dynamics of locomotion, and other aspects of the functioning of animal bodies. Physical laws provide possibilities and opportunities for an organism, yet they also impose constraints, setting limits to what is physically possible. This book aims to give an…
Even though I am a scientist who has written over 130 scientific articles, I have a longstanding passion for scientific books that are written for non-scientists. I love books about science, no matter how distant they are from my area of expertise. To me, the best science books convey the excitement of science and scientific thinking in an accessible manner, but without pandering or dumbing things down. My favorite books tackle big ideas and respect the reader’s intelligence. My choices here reflect my core interests in biology, evolution, and behavior—and the aesthetics of science, too. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
Genes have variously been described as selfish and controlling—as providing a blueprint or a program for development—as even “the cell’s brain”. These descriptions of genes get in the way of our understanding of what genes actually do—and what they don’t (and cannot) do. Evelyn Fox Keller provides an antidote to the simplistic notions of genes that permeate our society and infect our scientific discourse. She carefully walks us through the history of the field and provides us with a much more realistic view of the intricacies of DNA. By the end of this marvelous book, you may not even think that genes are a thing at all.
In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful, profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular biology in the twentieth century, the century of the gene. Not just a chronicle of biology's progress from gene to genome in one hundred years, The Century of the Gene also calls our attention to the surprising ways these advances challenge the familiar picture of the gene most of us still entertain.
Keller shows us that the…
While growing up as a budding intellectual, two of my passions were social science (in other words, politics), and natural science, particularly biology. For decades, I thought of those as two unconnected fields of knowledge. I studied politics in my professional capacity as a government professor, and I read nature and wildlife studies as a hobby. Then, one day in 2000, I picked up a copy of a book by Stephen J. Gould, a Harvard paleontologist. It struck me that in every sentence he was combining science and politics. It was an on-the-road-to-Damascus moment. Since then, I have studied and written about the politics of evolution.
A Marxist critique of evolutionary biology, authored by a geneticist, a neuroscientist, and a psychologist. From a perspective about as far from the viewpoint of creationists as it is possible to get, these three scholars argue that the philosophical assumptions, methodology, and social organization of modern biology add up to a politically conservative conspiracy reinforcing capitalism, racism, classism, and misogyny. Although their attack is general, it is most specifically aimed at intelligence testing, which, they argue, is shoddy science in the service of racist ideology.
Not in our Genes systematically exposes and dismantles the claims that inequalities class, race, gender are the products of biological, genetic inheritances. 'Informative, entertaining, lucid, forceful, frequently witty... never dull... should be read and remembered for a long time.' - New York Times Book Review. 'The authors argue persuasively that biological explanations for why we act as we do are based on faulty (in some cases, fabricated) data and wild speculation... It is debunking at its best.' - Psychology Today
When I was younger, I got into a lot of trouble. Many good-hearted people helped me. In part, this inspired me to become a clinical psychologist. When I was in graduate school at Harvard, I became disillusioned with clinical psychology and inspired to figure out why people are motivated to help others. During this process, a lecturer from the Biology Department, Robert Trivers, approached me and we exchanged drafts of papers we were writing. Trivers’ ideas caused me to see altruism and morality in an entirely different, and much more valid, way. In Survival of the Virtuous I demonstrate how psychological findings on altruism and morality can be gainfully interpreted from an evolutionary perspective.
More than thirty years ago, when I was conducting research on the psychology of altruism and moral development, a biologist recommended that I read The Selfish Gene.
Reading Dawkins’ book caused me to change my theoretical orientation completely. It enabled me to see that if I wanted to understand altruism and morality, I needed to understand how the genes that guide the construction of the mental mechanisms that cause us to help others evolved.
Although the title of the book implies that we are selfish by nature, the contents explain how selfish genes can guide the development of unselfish animals.
The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages.
As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty…
As a medical herbalist for over 25 years, I have long been treating people for chronic fatigue, post-viral fatigue, and, more recently, Long Covid. These days, there is so much stress to consider too, and I have recognized that stress has a major effect on the health of our bodies and also our life experience. One of my great interests in life is the wisdom of Nature, spirituality, and metaphysics. I love to combine medical science with spirituality, metaphysics, and Nature to contribute to helping people to feel their best through the wisdom of nature.
Biologist Bruce Lipton is one of my favorite scientists. This book is built on a moment when he was in his laboratory growing stem cells in petri dishes, when one day, he made a fascinating discovery. It is not the genes that determine the outcome of the cells but the environment.
Extrapolating that to the whole human being, the book clearly outlines that our thoughts create our health outcomes. The environment in which our cells are bathed, as explained by Dr Lipton, is our blood, the chemistry of which is determined by our emotional state, which, in turn, is controlled by our thoughts.
His overriding message is that we can use our minds to change the environment of our bodies, our health, and thus our entire life experience. I love Bruce Lipton because of his cheerful and encouraging message that we are empowered to change our lives for the better.
This 10th-anniversary edition of Bruce Lipton's best-selling book
The Biology of Belief has been updated to bolster the book's central premise with the latest scientific discoveries-and there have been a lot in the last decade.
The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of new biology. Former medical school professor and research scientist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., presents his experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, which examine in great detail the mechanisms by which cells receive and process information.
The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life, showing that genes and DNA do…
I’m an Irish novelist and poet. Fiction writers are perhaps better described by their fascinations than by any expertise as such. I can’t claim to be an expert in anything, but I am easily fascinated. My educational background is in philosophy, but I’ve always had a tremendous interest in the natural world too, and my writing tends to reflect that. When it comes to fiction, I love books that throw new layers on old surfaces. With nonfiction, I love anything that can explain something. Nonfiction loves to adorn itself with fiction, while fiction tends to cling to nonfiction like flesh on a bone. So my list is mostly bones, and one big sea pearl.
Science fiction envisions the future. The best way to imagine future change is to look at how and when change occurred in the past.
The drivers seldom change: climate, war, and famine. None of those indicators are looking particularly good for humanity right now. Dudley Young’s masterful, poetic, and irreverent scholarly work about the origins of the sacred in human history is the most enjoyable and rewarding book I have read on human evolution and development. So many things began to make sense to me after reading it.
Young is a steamroller of a writer, sloshing through millions of years of paleontology and thousands of years of early human culture with the same vim and swagger as he does Yeats’ poetry (his field of expertise)—and all in wonderful prose.
Tracing the origins of mankind's identity through evolutionary biology and mythological literature, Dudley Young examines the primitive mind and the development of religion and sacredness as seen through our ancestors. Attempting to unearth the origins of violence and to answer the question "Are we born violent?", Young begins millions of years ago, with the transformation of the arboreal monkey into a chimpanzee. As man's brain grew and became more advanced, his most basic instincts - sex and violence - became unharnessed and unprogrammed at the same time that human civilisation emerged. The book concludes on a tragic theme, with the…
I have always wondered why people choose and act in particular ways, from heroism and altruism to selfishness and greed. Human society is a kaleidoscope of changing actions and fortunes. Social science tries to explain why. But I was dissatisfied with its answers. Then I discovered writers who used evolutionary ideas to help explain social and economic change. I realized that evolution did not mean reducing everything to biology. I became fascinated by Darwin’s deeper and wider ideas about human society, cooperation, and motivation. I read widely and joined with others of similar mind. It is an exciting and rewarding intellectual landscape to explore. I strongly recommend a long visit.
I often find well-researched histories of ideas invaluable as quarries for enhanced understanding and intellectual inspiration. This book is an exceptionally useful history of some key Darwinian ideas. Its principal focus is on evolutionary theories of mind, morality, and behavior, which have massive implications for the further development of the social sciences today. Richards sketches the intellectual background of Darwin’s thought in the nineteenth century, showing how he distanced himself from utilitarian approaches to moral and psychological analysis. The contrast with Herbert Spencer is particularly pertinent. But even more so, Darwin’s anti-utilitarianism remains highly relevant today, as much of social science – especially economics – is still dominated by utilitarian ideas. This history of thought defends evolutionary approaches to morality and it is explosive in its implications.
With insight and wit, Robert J. Richards focuses on the development of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior from their first distinct appearance in the eighteenth century to their controversial state today. Particularly important in the nineteenth century were Charles Darwin's ideas about instinct, reason, and morality, which Richards considers against the background of Darwin's personality, training, scientific and cultural concerns, and intellectual community. Many critics have argued that the Darwinian revolution stripped nature of moral purpose and ethically neutered the human animal. Richards contends, however, that Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and their disciples attempted to reanimate moral life, believing that…
I like trying to solve problems about the mind: Is the mind just the brain? What is consciousness, and where is it in the brain? What happens in the brain during aesthetic experience? Why are we prone to self-deception? In approaching these questions, I don’t limit myself to one discipline or set of techniques. These mental phenomena, and the problems that surround them, do not hew to our disciplinary boundaries. In spite of this, someone needs to collect, analyze, and assess information relevant to the problems—which is in many different formats—and build theories designed to make sense of it. During that time, more data will become available, so back you go.
Anjan Chatterjee has managed to write a book that a) is very accessible, b) provides thorough coverage of current attempts to understand art and aesthetic experience by using information from the cognitive sciences, and c) outlines an original hypothesis about why humans evolved a love for art. That last part changes the book from a nice review of the topic to a groundbreaking attempt at an explanation of our art practices.
Chatterjee examines our judgments of peoples’ attractiveness, the brain’s system of reward chemicals, and our evolutionary history, in an attempt to understand our passion for art scientifically.
In an upcoming book on art, I refer to Chatterjee frequently. I don’t always agree with him, but his sensible, clear, and broad approach made his book very useful to me.
The Aesthetic Brain takes readers on an exciting journey through the world of beauty, pleasure, and art. Using the latest advances in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, Anjan Chatterjee investigates how an aesthetic sense is etched into our minds, and explains why artistic concerns feature centrally in our lives. Along the way, Chatterjee addresses such fundamental questions as: What is beauty? Is it universal? How is beauty related to pleasure? What is art? Should art be beautiful? Do we have an instinct for art?
Early on, Chatterjee probes the reasons why we find people, places, and even numbers beautiful, highlighting the…
