Fans pick 100 books like The Phenomenon of Man

OK, maybe it’s funny to recommend a book that sold in the millions. But this, and the TV series that went along with it, remains the best explanation of the evolution of astronomy and, especially, the social context for that evolution. Carl Sagan is by far the best science popularizer of the past century.

While researching Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, I rented an apartment a few blocks from a house where Galileo lived in Florence. I could stand outside its door every day, but this book transported me inside—not just a building but a family, a home, and an era. 

Dava Sobel’s meticulous research reveals not just new dimensions of Galileo’s life and work as an intrepid scientist but the often hidden realm inhabited by his daughter. Illegitimate and unmarriageable, she entered a convent at age 13 to live in poverty and simplicity. And yet, as her letters demonstrate, Sister Marie Celeste’s soul and spirit soared. The ending—which I dare not spoil—has haunted me since my first reading decades ago.

This transformational classic, first published in 1975 and now translated into nearly two dozen languages, pioneered the integration of modern scientific insights from quantum mechanics with ancient spiritual wisdom.

I read it in mid-life when I was struggling to integrate my own identity, torn between competing poles: the rational and the intuitive. There were so many “Aha” passages in this brilliant book, but the fundamental insight is “both-and,” not “either-or.” At root, science and spirituality are complementary, not antagonistic.

Capra’s motivation for writing the book: “Physicists do not need mysticism, and mystics do not need physics, but humanity needs both.” Metaphorically speaking, we human beings are amphibians occupying two worlds: physical and spiritual. This book helped me to embrace both.

In 2009, while completing my book, I had the privilege to meet pioneering experimental psychologist Lawrence LeShan. I’d quoted LeShan several times in my book and wanted to know more of his story. He received me graciously at his cluttered Manhattan apartment and patiently filled in details of his writing The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist (MMP).

As a young Turk with a Ph.D. in psychology, LeShan set out to debunk all the “nonsense” about so-called paranormal phenomena. By his own admission, he “made a mistake”: he looked at the data. The data were so compelling that LeShan shifted focus from trying to debunk to trying to understand the paranormal.

MMP is the fascinating story of the different threads that LeShan’s subsequent intellectual journey followed.

Fleeing the Nazi Anschluss, Austrian quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (famous for the wave equation and his eponymous cat) took refuge at Trinity College in Dublin. To thank his hosts, Schrödinger delivered a series of ground-breaking lectures in 1943, later published as What is Life? Schrödinger’s thought-provoking queries, originating from quantum mechanics, paved the way for the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. After the war, in subsequent lectures published as Mind and Matter, Schrödinger tackled a deeper subject: the nature of consciousness.

Together, these classics are unparalleled in what they imply about life and its most remarkable attribute: sentience.

Troubling aspects of Schrödinger’s personal life make it tempting to exclude this work. Ultimately, it's crucial to separate the profound message from the messenger, who was deeply flawed.

This best explains why the dominant ideas in the popular version of science are wrong and why the right ideas make sense. Prigogine, a Nobel Laureate, and his colleague philosopher Isabelle Stengers show that the popular notions of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, time, and determinism don’t correspond to scientific observations.

These wrong notions lead to paradoxes that make it impossible for scientists to understand such basic phenomena as human consciousness, which makes all science possible. Instead, the authors lay out an evolutionary approach, validated by much research, that shows how time, evolution, and reality can be understood without mysticism.

While this book is not about science, it gives the social context for how ancient scientific and anti-scientific ideas developed in slave-owning societies and before. It is the best description of the development of human society to the end of the ancient period that I’ve ever read.

Unfortunately, some of the anti-science ideas of ancient slave-owners, discredited in the scientific revolution, are still with us today, and Child explains how they came to be.

Gamow, one of the greatest popularizers of science and a leading nuclear researcher, clearly describes for non-scientific audiences the drama of the early evolution of quantum theory.

For those who think, based on current popularization, that quantum mechanics is akin to mysticism, this book shows how the quantum debates evolved in real life. Gamow, unlike current popularizers, does not assume that the debates have been resolved in favor of some nonsensical obscurantism.

Many commentators have made the observation that a great deal of the violence and nihilism of our time can be traced back to the split in Western civilization between our science traditions and our wisdom traditions. But as science deepened its understanding of the universe, there came a moment when suddenly it was possible to bring science and wisdom back together.

The genius who blazed a path to this new synthesis was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I will never forget the impact his book had on me. In a phrase, I would say the great gift I received from reading his book was to experience cosmological time as sacred. It led to an escape from dualism and an entrance into an enchanted universe.

Simon Conway Morris is a Cambridge academic, and his book is published by Cambridge University Press–but don’t let that put non-academic readers off. This is one of the few books I think you can genuinely call important.

It takes on the now wearyingly familiar idea that evolution is pure random chance, with no direction, no purpose, no goal, and dismantles it–with page after page of detailed information.

This is absolutely no ill-informed, anti-evolutionary rant but the work of a great scholar with complete mastery of his subject. While it does not engage with religion directly, the implications for religion (and indeed for so many other vital human beliefs and activities) are left hanging in the air.