Here are 100 books that The Taming of Chance fans have personally recommended if you like
The Taming of Chance.
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My father was an artist who painted passionately, almost always outdoors. When I told him I wanted to become an art historian, he was sad partly because he hated art historians, but mainly because he imagined me chained (as a writer) to a desk, rather than marching the countryside looking for things to paint or draw. Like most writers, I sometimes get seriously bogged down, and his sadness comes back to haunt me. But then I pick up a book that, in just a few pages, puts my writing back on track, gladdening my father’s ghost.
Prose turned into poetry, history made uncanny, this slim volume by the master of cryptic visual illustration is an incredibly useful prompt for how to get one’s own writing going on a new and stranger track. Along the way, Sebald (author of The Emigrants and Austerlitz) delivers yet another powerful suite of stories entwining art and life.
After Nature is the very first literary work by W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz
'The greatest writer of our time' Peter Carey
After Nature by W.G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz, is his first literary work and the start of his highly personal and brilliant writing journey.
In this long prose poem, Sebald introduces many of the themes that he explores in his subsequent books. Focusing on the conflict between man and nature, each of the three distinct parts of After Nature give centre stage to a different character from a different century - the last being W.G. Sebald himself.…
My father was an artist who painted passionately, almost always outdoors. When I told him I wanted to become an art historian, he was sad partly because he hated art historians, but mainly because he imagined me chained (as a writer) to a desk, rather than marching the countryside looking for things to paint or draw. Like most writers, I sometimes get seriously bogged down, and his sadness comes back to haunt me. But then I pick up a book that, in just a few pages, puts my writing back on track, gladdening my father’s ghost.
Unable to finish a manuscript? This delicious book came about (I’m told) by accident, when its author, struggling with his vast magnum opus, decided to put it down, almost randomly, into a little book of startling essays. The result is an eye-opening study of how “things” need “persons” to speak on their behalf, becoming personable. Includes amazing insights into iconoclasm, ecological litigation, and the legal fight of Abolitionists. And teaches how to write less, cut more, and edit with creative abandon.
A strikingly original work, Friends of Interpretable Objects re-anchors aesthetics in the object of attention even as it redefines the practice, processes, meaning, and uses of interpretation.
Miguel Tamen's concern is to show how inanimate objects take on life through their interpretation--notably, in our own culture, as they are collected and housed in museums. It is his claim that an object becomes interpretable only in the context of a "society of friends." Thus, Tamen suggests, our inveterate tendency as human beings to interpret the phenomenal world gives objects not only a life but also a society. As his work unfolds,…
I am an award-winning historian and philosopher of the human sciences. But I got here by means of an unusually varied path: working for a private investigator, practicing in a Buddhist monastery, being shot at, hiking a volcano off the coast of Africa, being jumped by a gang in Amsterdam, snowboarding in the Pyrenees, piloting a boat down the canals of Bourgogne, playing bass guitar in a punk band, and once I almost died from scarlet fever. Throughout my journey, I have lived and studied in five countries, acquired ten languages, and attended renowned universities (Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford), all while seeking ways to make the world a better place.
The late French philosopher Bruno Latour was infamous for his iconoclastic work in the history and sociology of science and technology.
If you read only one of his books, I’d say go for We Have Never Been Modern because it cuts to the heart of things by disrupting the conventional understanding of modernity as a clear separation between nature and culture. Latour argues that even as “moderns” have been rhetorically invested in this particular bifurcation of the world, nature-culture hybrids are continually proliferating.
So if you’ve ever asked yourself, why are cities not considered natural landscapes? Or why are animals always presumed to be without culture? Or what does it even mean to be modern? Then this is the book for you.
With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith.
What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology,…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
My father was an artist who painted passionately, almost always outdoors. When I told him I wanted to become an art historian, he was sad partly because he hated art historians, but mainly because he imagined me chained (as a writer) to a desk, rather than marching the countryside looking for things to paint or draw. Like most writers, I sometimes get seriously bogged down, and his sadness comes back to haunt me. But then I pick up a book that, in just a few pages, puts my writing back on track, gladdening my father’s ghost.
Steven’s poems have the cadence of philosophical argument. Entering into this cadence can raise one’s own writing, and thoughts, to a higher plane, without its becoming flowery or affective. For years I kept this collection open to the poem “The Poems of Our Climate,” with its consolation: “...the imperfect is so hot in us / Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds."
This selection of works by Wallace Stevens--the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet”--was first published in 1967. Edited by the poet's daughter Holly Stevens, it contains all the major long poems and sequences, and every shorter poem of lasting value in Stevens' career, including some not printed in his earlier Collected Works. Included also is a short play by Stevens, "Bowl, Cat and Broomstick."
I believe that knowledge is power. Understanding how something works leads to practical applications. In markets, I believe you should develop your own ideas on how to invest rather than being told. After all, how can you profit if you’re doing what everyone else is doing? Markets are efficient enough to give an opportunity to everyone but advantage to no one, unless you do something different than the crowd. My list is designed to give you information to develop investment strategies based on chaos theory, complexity, and fractals. It is not designed to tell you how to invest.
Fractals are a combination of chance and rules, randomness and order. This book gives us multiple examples of how important randomness and uncertainty are to evolution, adaptability, and innovation.
This book is not about the markets, but it does show us how the element of uncertainty that cannot be eliminated from investing is crucial to the functioning of markets and other non-linear dynamical systems. Since risk and uncertainty are closely tied, understanding how chance functions in the development of markets will help in the development of market strategies.
Using game theory and examples of actual games people play, Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler show how the elements of chance and rules underlie all that happens in the universe, from genetic behavior through economic growth to the composition of music. To illustrate their argument, the authors turn to classic games--backgammon, bridge, and chess--and relate them to physical, biological, and social applications of probability theory and number theory. Further, they have invented, and present here, more than a dozen playable games derived from scientific models for equilibrium, selection, growth, and even the composition of RNA.
I'm a teacher, philosopher, writer, Professor of Philosophy, and holder of the Sullivan Chair in Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. I'm the author/editor of sixteen books on such topics as religion and science, religion and politics, contemporary European philosophy, and political philosophy. I'm particularly interested in how religion and science, especially evolution, can be shown to be compatible with each other, as well as in developing an argument that there is no chance operating in nature (including in biology). My book and the books below explore these fascinating topics from almost every possible angle, and should whet readers’ appetites for further thinking about these intriguing matters!
This collection of essays takes a different position to mine on the question of chance in evolution. This book boldly approaches the study of evolution with the assumption that there is a large element of chance, contingency, and randomness in the process. Bringing together biologists, and philosophers of science, it explores many aspects of the theory as well as its implications for the existence of life on earth, and especially for the emergence of Homo sapiens. Along the way, the authors tackle such topics as genetic drift, mutation, and parallel evolution. By engaging in collaboration across biology, history, philosophy, and theology, the book offers a comprehensive overview of the history of chance in evolution and at the same time prompts readers to push further the central question as to what the existence of genuine chance would mean for our understanding of nature.
Humans, however much we would care to think otherwise, do not represent the fated pinnacle of ape evolution. The diversity of life, from single-celled organisms to multicellular animals and plants, is the result of a long, complex, and highly chancy history. But how profoundly has chance shaped life on earth? And what, precisely, do we mean by chance? Bringing together biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of science, Chance in Evolution is the first book to untangle the far-reaching effects of chance, contingency, and randomness on the evolution of life. The book begins by placing chance in historical context, starting…
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
As a student of the markets and investing for 3 decades and a professional investment advisor overseeing billions of dollars for over 2 decades, I have discovered that most investment books and information lack real insight. Much of what I read and see is not thoughtful or deeply researched and merely a regurgitation of what everyone else is saying. I’ve learned that most of what is thought to be conventional thinking is remarkably poorly supported by independent, unbiased research. The books on my recommended list go beyond what you’d read in the average investment book to uncover truly insightful knowledge that I believe can help readers take their investment understanding to the next level.
The investment world is dominated by players who essentially have the same beliefs and say the same things. I love writers who offer a unique perspective informed by an independent framework.
One of the greatest challenges in investing is distinguishing luck from skill. Taleb does a masterful job of raising the readers’ awareness of this common oversight. I believe reading this book will make you a more thoughtful investor.
Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy - or something altogether more unpredictable?
This book is the bestselling sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. It is all about luck: more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets - we hear an entrepreneur has 'vision' or a trader is 'talented', but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than…
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 “how could anything like that possibly happen at all?”-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.
Throughout science, math, finance, and your personal life… underlying almost everything is the concept of a random walk. I love how Mlodinow builds our intuition for this simple yet subtle idea. Yes, the expectation may be zero, but the variance grows without limit—it took me years of study to truly feel that statement and others in my bones, but Mlodinow shows this and much more through vivid, often hilarious examples. It is no exaggeration to say that after Chapter 6, you will understand conditional probability—where so many of us stumble when we think about real situations—better than you would after a whole course on statistics.
And although this is a science book, I challenge anyone to read the last five pages and end up dry-eyed. Years later, as I reread them, the impact is undiminished.
Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is an exhilarating, eye-opening guide to understanding our random world.
Randomness and uncertainty surround everything we do. So why are we so bad at understanding them?
The same tools that help us understand the random paths of molecules can be applied to the randomness that governs so many aspects of our everyday lives, from winning the lottery to road safety, and reveals the truth about the success of sporting heroes and film stars, and even how to make sense of a blood test.
The Drunkard's Walk reveals the psychological illusions…
All of these books come with elements of uncertainty and risk – it takes heroism (or stupidity) to tackle them head-on. Fantasy and Science Fiction are nice settings for it – authors can and have conjured up situations that we possibly couldn’t tackle in the real world – but their solutions are often very much what we would go with in the real world. Besides, anxiety creates problems. The more we have anxious, unprepared people – the more problems we get – which is why it should be important to learn everything one can about uncertainty, heroics (and not the pathological kind), and risk.
Incerto, that is Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile and Skin in the Game (+ Bed of Procrustes, which is a collection of very smart aphorisms) are not exactly fiction, but maestro added fiction into it anyway. Nero, Fat Tony, Jevgenia demonstrate on unrelated occasions how the ideas and properties (found in the "real world" discussed in the book would unfold. The overall theme of the book, however, discusses risk - risk-taking. And believe it or not, risk exists in all domains of life, hence, using this book to meditate on it deeply made me appreciate... It made me appreciate life, and all things in life – more than I used to. It might sound like a lot, and it is... If there is just one non-fiction book you will read, make it Taleb's Incerto.
The landmark five-book series—all together in one ebook bundle
The Incerto is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don’t understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientific discussions, in non-overlapping volumes that can be accessed in any order. The main thread is that while there is inordinate uncertainty about what is going on, there is great certainty as to what one should do about it.
This ebook bundle includes: FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS THE BLACK SWAN THE BED OF…
Having majored in both philosophy and physics as an undergraduate, I specialized in the philosophy of science in graduate school–with a focus on the possibility of a “logic of scientific discovery.” Most philosophers of science have been skeptical about such a sub-discipline, restricting their theories of scientific method to the justification of already-formulated hypotheses. Others (including myself) have held that there is also a logic to the generation of hypotheses.
This is a fascinating analysis of the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Gilbert, Boyle, and Newton. It not only establishes the reasons for the triumph of the modern perspective but also accounts for certain limitations in this view that continue to characterize contemporary scientific thought.
A criticism as well as a history of the change that made possible the rise of modern science, this volume is also a guide to understanding the methods and accomplishments of the great philosopher-scientists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
s/t: A Historical & Critical Essay Many books well received when originally published ultimately fail the test of time & seem outdated to future generations. Occasionally, a book seen as a solid effort when written is found later to be the definitive work on the subject. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science by Edwin Arthur Burtt is such. Burtt investigates the origins of the modern scientific worldview, a view that's only a few centuries old. Concepts used to describe the world--mass, velocity, energy, time etc--form the substratum of so many modern ideas that their very ubiquity has made it hard…
