100 books like The Remembered Present

The first three books contributed to the development of new categorical notions for our MES theory. Our fourth book takes a different turn, narrating the tale of an austere order of intellectuals secluded in Castalia, where they essentially engage in the cultivation and play of the Glass Bead Game. This game represents an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences, stimulating creativity.

From what is said about the rules of the game, and in terms of Margareth Boden (well known for her research on creativity and A.I. ), this game satisfies Boden’s rules for combinatory and exploratory creativity but not for transformational one. We posed the mathematical challenge of modifying the game's rules to enable transformational creativity and, utilizing MES; we gave conditions for this to become possible.

We appreciate this book because it helped us to introduce the concept of a ‘hierarchical category,’ which is necessary to describe our MES. We accomplished this by translating Koestler's concept of a "hierarchy of holons," where a holon embodies a 'hybrid nature' akin to a two-faced Janus.

Technically, a hierarchical category organizes objects into numbered levels (0 to m). An object at level n is dual-faced: 'simple' compared to levels above n, but 'complex' compared to levels < n, this object being the "colimit" (or combination) of linked objects < n. Within a hierarchical category, we compute the 'complexity order' for each object. The category aligns with pure reductionism if it lacks objects with a complexity order greater than 1.

Thom's work on the "physics of meaningful forms," also known as Semiophysics, deeply influenced our approach to modeling structural changes in Memory-Evolutive Systems (MES). Indeed, in ‘natural’ systems, he classifies these changes as one of four standard changes—Birth, Death, Confluence, and Scission—which offer valuable insights into how components and interactions evolve over time within these systems. Integrating Thom's framework has enriched our understanding of MES dynamics. 

In MES, this led us to formulate the "Complexification Theorem," which characterizes the resulting category following structural changes: Birth or Death corresponds to adding or removing components, while Confluence leads to the formation of a colimit for a specific pattern of interconnected components, and Scission results in the decomposition of a given colimit.

The last book on our list is a recent addition, distinguished by its illustrative format and contemporary content; in particular. Structured uniquely, it comprises three parts (plus a foreword). 

The first section, titled "The Innovator’s Odyssey," narrates the journey of a young innovator designer grappling with bureaucratic hurdles in organizational settings. Amidst these challenges, he embarks on a quest for a "mathesis singularis"–a unique mathematical framework to aid innovation management. This quest leads him to discover our MES book.

The second part features an insightful interview with the author, offering valuable insights into the book's creation. Lastly, the third section includes a short Mathematical Appendix (for further exploration).

If you’re reading my book recommendations, it’s almost certainly because you read the book Dan Lieberman and I wrote about dopamine. In that case, you’ll want to read the book that inspired us to write our book, Fred Previc’s seminal explanation of the technical aspects of dopamine and psychology. If you were hoping for a deeper diver on certain points, Previc’s text is the only way to go – and we remain grateful to him for his groundbreaking work.

The brain people are all over art.

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. 

This book is one of the nuttiest I’ve read in its imaginings of a modern world on steroids. The part that teases most is that its predictions might come true.

I know our smartphones and laptops have changed our world, but cures that would extend longevity ad infinitum? Neural interfaces that would connect us directly to the internet? Nanobots that would reduce the cost of goods to zero?

Because the topic of modernity has come to engross me so, the big question always is, “How far will it carry us?” The answer to which (according to Kurzweil) is much farther than you can possibly imagine and much sooner than you think. One should have one’s mind blown every couple of years, and Kurzweil does exactly that.

I was blown away by the vistas it opened across classic work on genetics and palaeoanthropology, and the implications for understanding how our ancestors evolved.

It also showed how the politics of so-called ‘sociobiology’ impeded that understanding, through acrimonious disputes that later turned out to be pointless. Those disputes were very much examples of what I call ‘dichotomization’, the unconscious assumption that an issue is binary, an either-or question, when in reality it is far more complex with many different aspects.

A raw and bloody gem of a book, which plunges the reader into the cold and dirty world of our deep past, not just seen but experienced by its multi-talented author.

A philosophical hankering to know what it means to be human – and what we have inherited from our evolutionary past -leads this trained veterinarian, barrister, and writer to go back to nature in a Derbyshire wood. He and his long-suffering son experience the freezing, claw-red, and skin-tearing nature of the wild, as they seek to live similarly to our prehistoric ancestors.

Drawing inspiration from the 40,000 years of the Upper Palaeolithic, in an environment similar to the Mesolithic, Foster paints a blistering, spraining, and chilling account of the demands of a more primitive life. Essential reading from the comfort of my couch.

Cephalopods, which encompass creatures like squids, cuttlefish, and octopuses, stand as some of nature's most peculiar inhabitants.

Without bones or outer shells, they possess the remarkable ability to alter their shape, almost resembling characters from Gary Larson's extraterrestrial sketches. What sets them apart further is their exceptional intelligence, a trait not commonly associated with their mollusk cousins like snails and oysters.

Godfrey-Smith puts forth a compelling argument suggesting that intelligent life may have independently evolved multiple times right here on our home planet. He contemplates whether consciousness, once believed to be a solely human attribute, emerged early in the animal kingdom's evolutionary journey, serving as a vital mechanism for interpreting sensory information, evading predators, and sourcing sustenance.