Love The Philosophical Baby? Readers share 100 books like The Philosophical Baby...

By Alison Gopnik,

Here are 100 books that The Philosophical Baby fans have personally recommended if you like The Philosophical Baby. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Origin of Concepts

William Byers Author Of How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics

From my list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a mathematician but an unusual one because I am interested in how mathematics is created and how it is learned. From an early age, I loved mathematics because of the beauty of its concepts and the precision of its organization and reasoning. When I started to do research I realized that things were not so simple. To create something new you had to suspend or go beyond your rational mind for a while. I realized that the learning and creating of math have non-logical features. This was my eureka moment. It turned the conventional wisdom (about what math is and how it is done) on its head.

William's book list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics

William Byers Why did William love this book?

Iā€™m interested in how mathematicians create mathematics but this book made me realize that learning mathematics is also a form of creativity. Each of us has created our understanding of mathematics as we were growing up. We are all creative!  

What is amazing about this book is that even children as young as six months possess rudimentary mathematical concepts, in particular, the concept of number. (Actually, Carey shows children have two distinct ways of thinking about numbers). The concept of number is built-in. Thatā€™s amazing to me! The mastery of counting numbers, 1,2,3,ā€¦ is a great creative leap in the development of the child. This leap is followed by a series of further amazing accomplishments, for example, the insight that a fraction like 2/3, is a completely new kind of number (and not just a problem in division). How do kids manage to accomplish such radical changes in their conceptā€¦

By Susan Carey,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Origin of Concepts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Only human beings have a rich conceptual repertoire with concepts like tort, entropy, Abelian group, mannerism, icon and deconstruction. How have humans constructed these concepts? And once they have been constructed by adults, how do children acquire them? While primarily focusing on the second question, in The Origin of Concepts , Susan Carey shows that the answers to both overlap substantially.

Carey begins by characterizing the innate starting point for conceptual development, namely systems of core cognition. Representations of core cognition are the output of dedicated input analyzers, as with perceptual representations, but these core representations differ from perceptual representationsā€¦


Book cover of Childhood and Society

James Bernard Murphy Author Of Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

From my list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I experienced being a parent as a return to my own childhood. As much as I enjoyed teaching my children, I loved learning from them as well. That got me thinking about how one might recapture the joys and insights of childhood. As a philosopher interested in education, I have long wondered whether we leave childhood behind or somehow carry it with us into old age. I discovered that several important philosophers, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Rousseau have keen insights about the relation of childhood to adulthood. And the biblical Jesus seems to have been the first person to suggest that adults can learn from children. 

James' book list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age

James Bernard Murphy Why did James love this book?

I was fascinated by Eriksonā€™s theory of the eight stages of human life, from infancy to old age. At each stage, he says, we must solve a dilemma, starting with: ā€œtrust or distrust?ā€ Our ability to mature properly depends on meeting the challenges of each stage, which then propels us to the next stage.

I was disturbed, however, by the implications of his theory: if we fail to succeed in any given stage, our future development is permanently compromised. In short, we never really fully grow up. 

By Erik H. Erikson,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Childhood and Society as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The original and vastly influential ideas of Erik H. Erikson underlie much of our understanding of human development. His insights into the interdependence of the individuals' growth and historical change, his now-famous concepts of identity, growth, and the life cycle, have changed the way we perceive ourselves and society. Widely read and cited, his works have won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Combining the insights of clinical psychoanalysis with a new approach to cultural anthropology, Childhood and Society deals with the relationships between childhood training and cultural accomplishment, analyzing the infantile and the mature,ā€¦


Book cover of What Is Mathematics, Really?

William Byers Author Of How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics

From my list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a mathematician but an unusual one because I am interested in how mathematics is created and how it is learned. From an early age, I loved mathematics because of the beauty of its concepts and the precision of its organization and reasoning. When I started to do research I realized that things were not so simple. To create something new you had to suspend or go beyond your rational mind for a while. I realized that the learning and creating of math have non-logical features. This was my eureka moment. It turned the conventional wisdom (about what math is and how it is done) on its head.

William's book list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics

William Byers Why did William love this book?

Reuben Hersh is responsible for a revolution in the way we look at mathematics. His main idea is very simple: mathematics is something that is created by human beings. Isnā€™t that obvious, you say? Not if you believe that mathematics is there even before life itself, that it is built into the nature of reality in some way. In philosophy, this view is called Platonism. Hersh had the radical but obvious idea that if we want to understand what mathematics is we should look at what mathematicians actually do when they create mathematics. Like all great ideas it can be stated very simply but the implications are enormous.  His ideas are what got me started writing my own books about math and science.

By Reuben Hersh,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked What Is Mathematics, Really? as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book tackles the important questions which have engaged mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers for thousands of years and which are still being asked today. It does so with clarity and with scholarship born of first-hand experience; a knowledge both of the ideas and of the people who have pronounced on them. The main purpose of the book is to confront philosophical problems: In what sense do mathematical objects exist? How can we have knowledge of them? Why do mathematicians think mathematical entities exist for ever, independent of human action and knowledge? The book proposes an unconventional answer: mathematics has existenceā€¦


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Book cover of Proofs and Refutations

William Byers Author Of How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics

From my list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a mathematician but an unusual one because I am interested in how mathematics is created and how it is learned. From an early age, I loved mathematics because of the beauty of its concepts and the precision of its organization and reasoning. When I started to do research I realized that things were not so simple. To create something new you had to suspend or go beyond your rational mind for a while. I realized that the learning and creating of math have non-logical features. This was my eureka moment. It turned the conventional wisdom (about what math is and how it is done) on its head.

William's book list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics

William Byers Why did William love this book?

Lots of people have a priori ideas about what mathematics is all about but Lakatos had the brilliant idea of looking at what actually happened. His book is all about one famous theorem: ā€œfor all regular polyhedra, V ā€“ E + F =2, where V is the number of vertices, E is the number of edges, and F is the number of faces.  Think of a cube where V=8, E = 12, F = 6.  

We tend to think that mathematics proceeds from a well-defined hypothesis to conclusion. But that is only the finishing step. Along the way the definitions keep changing as do the hypotheses and even the conclusion. Everything is moving! This is what makes doing mathematics so exciting!

By Imre Lakatos,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Proofs and Refutations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Imre Lakatos's Proofs and Refutations is an enduring classic, which has never lost its relevance. Taking the form of a dialogue between a teacher and some students, the book considers various solutions to mathematical problems and, in the process, raises important questions about the nature of mathematical discovery and methodology. Lakatos shows that mathematics grows through a process of improvement by attempts at proofs and critiques of these attempts, and his work continues to inspire mathematicians and philosophers aspiring to develop a philosophy of mathematics that accounts for both the static and the dynamic complexity of mathematical practice. With aā€¦


Book cover of The Palliative Society: Pain Today

William Byers Author Of How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics

From my list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a mathematician but an unusual one because I am interested in how mathematics is created and how it is learned. From an early age, I loved mathematics because of the beauty of its concepts and the precision of its organization and reasoning. When I started to do research I realized that things were not so simple. To create something new you had to suspend or go beyond your rational mind for a while. I realized that the learning and creating of math have non-logical features. This was my eureka moment. It turned the conventional wisdom (about what math is and how it is done) on its head.

William's book list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics

William Byers Why did William love this book?

Itā€™s a little weird that this book should find a place on my list. Itā€™s a book about how society has become resistant to anything that is difficult and painful and the kinds of people that we have become as a result. But mathematics is difficult! To understand mathematics you have to think hard, sometimes for a long time. Moreover understanding something hard is discontinuous, it requires a leap to a new way of thinking. You have to start with a problem and this problem might be an ambiguity or a contradiction. A is true and B is true but A and B seem to contradict one another. When you sort out this problem you will have learned something.

The moral here is to embrace things that are difficult if you want to learn significant new things. ā€œNo pain, no gain.ā€ You donā€™t have to worry about some super AIā€¦

By Byung-Chul Han, Daniel Steuer (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Palliative Society as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Our societies today are characterized by a universal algophobia: a generalized fear of pain. We strive to avoid all painful conditions - even the pain of love is treated as suspect. This algophobia extends into society: less and less space is given to conflicts and controversies that might prompt painful discussions. It takes hold of politics too: politics becomes a palliative politics that is incapable of implementing radical reforms that might be painful, so all we get is more of the same.

Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, the palliative society is transformed into a society of survival. The virus entersā€¦


Book cover of Emile: Or On Education

James Bernard Murphy Author Of Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

From my list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I experienced being a parent as a return to my own childhood. As much as I enjoyed teaching my children, I loved learning from them as well. That got me thinking about how one might recapture the joys and insights of childhood. As a philosopher interested in education, I have long wondered whether we leave childhood behind or somehow carry it with us into old age. I discovered that several important philosophers, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Rousseau have keen insights about the relation of childhood to adulthood. And the biblical Jesus seems to have been the first person to suggest that adults can learn from children. 

James' book list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age

James Bernard Murphy Why did James love this book?

ā€œNever rush childhood but let it ripen in the childā€: Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first philosopher to see children as more than adults-in-training. As someone who loved revisiting childhood as a parent, I simply adored this celebration of the world of a child.

In this philosophical novel, Rousseau is tutor to Emile from infancy to adulthood, and we watch Emile discover the world without any use of schools or books: ā€œI hate books!ā€ says the world-famous author. Purely through experiential learning, Emile matures, falls in love with Sophie, and becomes a model citizen. Rousseau pioneers the idea of learning through natural consequences: if Emile breaks the window in his room, he gets to enjoy a cold room. 

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Allan Bloom (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Emile as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Alan Bloom's new translation of Emile , Rousseau's masterpiece on the education and training of the young, is the first in more than seventy years. In it, Bloom, whose magnificent translation of Plato's Republic has been universally hailed as a virtual rediscovery of that timeless text, again brings together the translator's gift for journeying between two languages and cultures and the philosopher's perception of the true meaning and significance of the issues being examined in the work. The result is a clear, readable, and highly engrossing text that at the same time offers a wholly new sense of the importanceā€¦


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Book cover of This Animal Body

This Animal Body by Meredith Walters,

Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life togetherā€”sheā€™s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuseā€¦

Book cover of Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study

James Bernard Murphy Author Of Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

From my list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I experienced being a parent as a return to my own childhood. As much as I enjoyed teaching my children, I loved learning from them as well. That got me thinking about how one might recapture the joys and insights of childhood. As a philosopher interested in education, I have long wondered whether we leave childhood behind or somehow carry it with us into old age. I discovered that several important philosophers, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Rousseau have keen insights about the relation of childhood to adulthood. And the biblical Jesus seems to have been the first person to suggest that adults can learn from children. 

James' book list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age

James Bernard Murphy Why did James love this book?

I loved hearing the stories of these men, both Harvard College students (including the young John F. Kennedy) and Boston ā€œtownies,ā€ as they mature from ages 20 to 90. The largest long-term study of human development, each of these 600 men was interviewed and studied every two years, creating a vast data set for students of human development.

George Vaillant, a Harvard psychiatrist, decided to test Erik Eriksonā€™s theory of the stages of life using the Harvard Grant data. What he found gives hope to all of us late-bloomers: early deficits could be redeemed by later successes. What matters, he found, is not IQ or perfect health but close relationships with family and friends. ā€œMaturation is the evolution of teenage self-centeredness into the disinterested empathy of a grandparent.ā€ 

By George E. Vaillant,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Triumphs of Experience as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At a time when many people around the world are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human development ever undertaken offers some welcome news for the new old age: our lives continue to evolve in our later years, and often become more fulfilling than before.

Begun in 1938, the Grant Study of Adult Development charted the physical and emotional health of over 200 men, starting with their undergraduate days. The now-classic Adaptation to Life reported on the men's lives up to age 55 and helped us understand adult maturation. Now George Vaillant follows the men intoā€¦


Book cover of Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism

James Bernard Murphy Author Of Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

From my list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I experienced being a parent as a return to my own childhood. As much as I enjoyed teaching my children, I loved learning from them as well. That got me thinking about how one might recapture the joys and insights of childhood. As a philosopher interested in education, I have long wondered whether we leave childhood behind or somehow carry it with us into old age. I discovered that several important philosophers, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Rousseau have keen insights about the relation of childhood to adulthood. And the biblical Jesus seems to have been the first person to suggest that adults can learn from children. 

James' book list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age

James Bernard Murphy Why did James love this book?

David Norton really shakes up our assumptions about human lives. According to him, we develop within the stages of life but not across them. The goal of life, he says, is self-actualization, meaning to become who we really are, but this goal excludes childhood because children donā€™t have a self to actualize and old age because the elderly cannot actualize their selves.

At each stage, we solve problems unique to that stage: for example, reconciling ourselves to death is a stage that might happen at any age from 18 to 80. Each stage is unique and cannot be compared to other stages. I found Nortonā€™s book to be very insightful and thought-provoking. 

By David L. Norton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Personal Destinies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What is the meaning of life? Modern professional philosophy has largely renounced the attempt to answer this question and has restricted itself to the pursuit of more esoteric truths. Not so David Norton. Following in the footsteps of Plato and Aristotle, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Jung and Maslow, he sets forth a distinctive vision of the individual's search for his place in the scheme of things. Norton's theory of individualism is rooted in the eudaimonistic ethics of the Creeks, who viewed each person as innately possessing a unique potential it was his destiny to fulfill. Very much the same idea resurfacedā€¦


Book cover of The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

Philip Nelson Author Of Biological Physics Student Edition: Energy, Information, Life

From my list on have your own science or math ideas.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have taught undergraduate and PhD students physics and biophysics for 36 years, and I never get tired of it. I always look for hot new topics and everyday things that we all see but rarely notice as interesting. I also look for ā€œhow could anything like that possibly happen at all?ā€-type questions and the eureka moment when some idea from physics or math pries off the lid, making a seemingly insoluble problem easy. Finally, I look for the skills and frameworks that will open the most doors to students in their future work.

Philip's book list on have your own science or math ideas

Philip Nelson Why did Philip love this book?

Math is so much more than algebra.

Steve Strogatz is our generationā€™s poet laureate of math. I could not put this book down because, although I use math daily, I was amazed at how Strogatz connects everything to everyday experience. Just one example: Hardly anyone gets told about ā€œgroup theoryā€ in high school because itā€™s ā€œtoo advancedā€ā€”but here we find it beautifully illustrated with the problem of flipping your mattress twice a year.

This book will help you have your own ideas by opening your eyes to a world of things that just make better sense through the lens of careful analysis, the interplay of the visual and the symbolic, and (just enough) abstraction.

By Steven Strogatz,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Joy of X as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Award-winning Steven Strogatz, one of the foremost popularisers of maths, has written a witty and fascinating account of maths' most compelling ideas and how, so often, they are an integral part of everyday life.

Maths is everywhere, often where we don't even realise. Award-winning professor Steven Strogatz acts as our guide as he takes us on a tour of numbers that - unbeknownst to the unitiated - connect pop culture, literature, art, philosophy, current affairs, business and even every day life. In The Joy of X, Strogatz explains the great ideas of maths - from negative numbers to calculus, fatā€¦


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Book cover of The Complete Eldercare Planner: Where to Start, Which Questions to Ask, and How to Find Help

The Complete Eldercare Planner by Joy Loverde,

Trusted for more than three decades by family caregivers and professionals alike, this comprehensive and reassuring caregiving guide offers the crucial information you need to look after your elders and plan for the future.

Being a caregiver for aging parents, close friends and family, and other elders in your lifeā€¦

Book cover of Our Days Are Numbered: How Mathematics Orders Our Lives

Richard Hoshino Author Of The Math Olympian

From my list on mathematics and life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have devoted my entire career to mathematics, and have a life filled with meaning and purpose through my roles as an educator, researcher, and consultant. I teach at the Vancouver campus of Northeastern University and am the owner and principal of Hoshino Math Services, a boutique math consulting firm. 

Richard's book list on mathematics and life

Richard Hoshino Why did Richard love this book?

For decades, the most famous opening chord in rock and roll was an unsolved problem, since no one could reproduce it. But in 2004, Jason Brown, a professor at Dalhousie University, used mathematics to recreate the opening chord of the Beatles hit song, ā€œA Hard Dayā€™s Nightā€. I remember when newspapers around the world reported on Jasonā€™s findings, as I was at Dalhousie at the time, as one of Jasonā€™s Ph.D. students.

Jasonā€™s Beatles story serves as the final chapter in this wonderful book, a collection of short vignettes about how mathematics relates to every aspect of our lives, including garbage pickup routes, grocery shopping, political polling, and social networks. The bookā€™s thesis is that as we understand mathematics better, our lives become more meaningful. I couldnā€™t agree more.    

By Jason I. Brown,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Our Days Are Numbered as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A revealing and entertaining look at the world, as viewed through mathematical eyeglasses.

From the moment our feet touch the floor in the morning until our head hits the pillow, numbers are everywhere. And yet most of us go through each day unaware of the mathematics that shapes our lives.

In fact, many people go through life fearing and avoiding mathematics, making choices that keep it at armā€™s length or further. Even basic math ā€” like arithmetic ā€” can seem baffling.

In Our Days Are Numbered, Jason Brown leads the reader through a typical day, on a fascinating journey. Heā€¦


Book cover of The Origin of Concepts
Book cover of Childhood and Society
Book cover of What Is Mathematics, Really?

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