Here are 100 books that The Unexpected Universe fans have personally recommended if you like
The Unexpected Universe.
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I have been increasingly interested in astrophysics since I was six years old. My mother hooked me on reading at five by stopping novels at critical points and urging me to continue. I’ve ever since read a broad range of books. I stumbled upon Dr. Loren Eiseley in the early 1970s and enjoyed his books immensely. As soon as a book by Dr. Carl Sagan was published, I wanted to read it. As I’ve grown older, I try not to think that ‘peak humanity’ is behind us–and books such as Sagan, Eiseley, and Rovelli offset that potentially depressing thought and provide solid encouragement.
As with my first recommendation, this book pulls together many of the ideas about people’s beliefs and thinking that I had growing up.
While I read it in ‘early middle age,’ it again synthesized a good many questions across a very broad range of topics. In the process, the book helped to solidify my own thoughts about the world in which we live and how to learn more about our Universe.
A prescient warning of a future we now inhabit, where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected American populace
“A glorious book . . . A spirited defense of science . . . From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought.”—Los Angeles Times
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the…
When I learned science's story of the universe–that it began as a primordial plasma that transformed itself into stars, galaxies and a living planet that then transmogrified into plants and animals and consciousness–when I learned the details of how the universe began as small as an acorn and then magically transformed that acorn of elementary particles into two trillion galaxies, I was beset with one, piercing, lifelong question: WHY ISN'T EVERYONE WAKING UP EACH MORNING STUNNED OUT OF THEIR MINDS? My entire professional life has been an effort to draw others into this amazement, into life as an ongoing celebration.
Thomas Berry was a cultural historian who studied the cultures of Europe, China, America, India, and the Indigenous worlds with a single burning question in his mind: What is the role of humanity in the universe? Of course, this idea that humanity has a cosmic role is the opposite of the view promoted by modern science of an evolving universe that is going nowhere.
Given his professional background in the humanities, it is surprising that Berry names science as the primary revelation of the divine. He is committed to the idea that the sciences have discovered a common creation story, one that will play an important role for centuries to come.
When I first met Thomas Berry and asked him about my personal role in the universe, he said simply, "Tell science's story of a developing universe; but tell it with a feeling for its music. That's what the spiritual…
This landmark work, first published by Sierra Club Books in 1988, has established itself as a foundational volume in the ecological canon. In it, noted cultural historian Thomas Berry provides nothing less than a new intellectual-ethical framework for the human community by positing planetary well-being as the measure of all human activity.
Drawing on the wisdom of Western philosophy, Asian thought, and Native American traditions, as well as contemporary physics and evolutionary biology, Berry offers a new perspective that recasts our understanding of science, technology, politics, religion, ecology, and education. He shows us why it is important for us to…
I have been increasingly interested in astrophysics since I was six years old. My mother hooked me on reading at five by stopping novels at critical points and urging me to continue. I’ve ever since read a broad range of books. I stumbled upon Dr. Loren Eiseley in the early 1970s and enjoyed his books immensely. As soon as a book by Dr. Carl Sagan was published, I wanted to read it. As I’ve grown older, I try not to think that ‘peak humanity’ is behind us–and books such as Sagan, Eiseley, and Rovelli offset that potentially depressing thought and provide solid encouragement.
I enjoyed this book because I’ve had many questions over the past
decade or so about quantum physics and the (eventual) redefinition of
gravity and spacetime.
Rovelli’s book helped me see connections between articles I’ve read and only partially understood. Those connections helped me communicate more clearly with people attending a science outreach event—'more clear communications' is better for everyone.
'The physicist transforming how we see the universe' (Financial Times)
'An utter joy' (Adam Rutherford)
'A hugely engaging book... Rovelli is a charming, thought-provoking tour guide' (Manjit Kumar Prospect)
Do space and time truly exist? What is reality made of? Can we understand its deep texture? Scientist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. In this mind-expanding book, he shows how our understanding of reality has changed throughout centuries, from Democritus to loop quantum gravity. Taking us on a wondrous journey, he invites us to imagine a whole new…
When I learned science's story of the universe–that it began as a primordial plasma that transformed itself into stars, galaxies and a living planet that then transmogrified into plants and animals and consciousness–when I learned the details of how the universe began as small as an acorn and then magically transformed that acorn of elementary particles into two trillion galaxies, I was beset with one, piercing, lifelong question: WHY ISN'T EVERYONE WAKING UP EACH MORNING STUNNED OUT OF THEIR MINDS? My entire professional life has been an effort to draw others into this amazement, into life as an ongoing celebration.
I am recommending Alfred North Whitehead's magnum opus because, in common with a number of other philosophers, I have come to the conclusion that Whitehead is the most important philosophical cosmologist of the last four hundred years.
For the most part, American philosophy works with the assumption that the universe is meaningless. This conclusion follows from taking Newtonian science as the ultimate truth of the large-scale universe. But this depressing view of things needs to be rejected now that we have discovered quantum physics, relativity, and complexity science, all of which go beyond the view of Newtonian mechanics.
Whitehead, deeply versed in mathematical sciences, gathered up all of these new insights and presented a radically different cosmology, one rooted not in mechanical metaphors but in a keen appreciation of an ever-flowing creativity. The great benefit of studying Whitehead is the power he provides for uprooting the subconscious commitments to Newtonian…
One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead's influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy.
Whitehead's master work in philsophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant.
The ultimate edition of Whitehead's magnum opus, Process and…
When I learned science's story of the universe–that it began as a primordial plasma that transformed itself into stars, galaxies and a living planet that then transmogrified into plants and animals and consciousness–when I learned the details of how the universe began as small as an acorn and then magically transformed that acorn of elementary particles into two trillion galaxies, I was beset with one, piercing, lifelong question: WHY ISN'T EVERYONE WAKING UP EACH MORNING STUNNED OUT OF THEIR MINDS? My entire professional life has been an effort to draw others into this amazement, into life as an ongoing celebration.
In his book, Wolfgang Leidhold examines the entire journey of humanity and discovers something truly amazing: even though the human brain has not changed in structure during the 300,000 years of the existence of Homo sapiens, a series of mental powers have been evoked through our conscious participation. He shows us how humans became involved in building human mentality, going through eight such transitions, including the evocation of self-reflexive consciousness, inner transcendence, and the reproductive imagination.
The great gift of this book is the conviction it awakens that the development of human consciousness is not over and that those of us alive today can become involved in what he calls "the next turn in human experience."
In a wide arc from the Paleolithic to the present day, this book explores the changing structure of human experience and its impact on the dynamics of cultures, civilizations, and political ideas.
The main thesis is a paradigm shift: the structure of human experience is not a universal constant but changes over time. Looking at the entire range of human history, there are a total of nine transformations, beginning with conscious perception and imagination in the Paleolithic and ending, for the time being, in modern times with the discovery of the unconscious. In between, this book explores six more transformations…
When I learned science's story of the universe–that it began as a primordial plasma that transformed itself into stars, galaxies and a living planet that then transmogrified into plants and animals and consciousness–when I learned the details of how the universe began as small as an acorn and then magically transformed that acorn of elementary particles into two trillion galaxies, I was beset with one, piercing, lifelong question: WHY ISN'T EVERYONE WAKING UP EACH MORNING STUNNED OUT OF THEIR MINDS? My entire professional life has been an effort to draw others into this amazement, into life as an ongoing celebration.
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.
The Human Phenomenon by the priest, paleontologist, and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is his book of the Earth, a discovery and an epic journey to open the way out for humanity in a time of world conflict and to release the spirit of the Earth. As Virgil led Dante, so Teilhard guides his reader back in spacetime to experience the birth of our planet as it emprisons the human future in its globe and motion, then forward, through the emergence of life, the birth of thought and socialization, and the unique mode of human unfolding as humanity covers the…
I have been increasingly interested in astrophysics since I was six years old. My mother hooked me on reading at five by stopping novels at critical points and urging me to continue. I’ve ever since read a broad range of books. I stumbled upon Dr. Loren Eiseley in the early 1970s and enjoyed his books immensely. As soon as a book by Dr. Carl Sagan was published, I wanted to read it. As I’ve grown older, I try not to think that ‘peak humanity’ is behind us–and books such as Sagan, Eiseley, and Rovelli offset that potentially depressing thought and provide solid encouragement.
For me, this book melded many ideas I had as I grew up on humanity’s
place in the Universe. Dr. Sagan’s writing just pulled many of my ideas
and understanding into one strong framework.
As with many of the books
I recommend, Sagan's writing showed me that I can do science and still
remain grounded without my ego expanding faster than the universe!
“Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review)
In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time.
Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history…
I have been increasingly interested in astrophysics since I was six years old. My mother hooked me on reading at five by stopping novels at critical points and urging me to continue. I’ve ever since read a broad range of books. I stumbled upon Dr. Loren Eiseley in the early 1970s and enjoyed his books immensely. As soon as a book by Dr. Carl Sagan was published, I wanted to read it. As I’ve grown older, I try not to think that ‘peak humanity’ is behind us–and books such as Sagan, Eiseley, and Rovelli offset that potentially depressing thought and provide solid encouragement.
I read practically everything anthropologist Dr. Eiseley wrote because he showed me that I did not have to be ‘robotic’ to enjoy science.
One of the best parts of the book involves a physicist and a turtle. I really enjoyed reading about ideas similar to those of Dr. Sagan but from an anthropologist’s view.
Loren Eiseley examines what we as a species have become in the late twentieth century. His illuminating and accessible discussion is a characteristically skillful and compelling synthesis of hard scientific theory, factual evidence, personal anecdotes, haunting reflection, and poetic prose.
Meaningful communications with people through life, books, and films have always given me a certain kind of mental nirvana of being transported to a place of delight. I see fine writing as an informative and entertaining conversation with a stranger I just met on a plane who has interesting things to say about the world. Books of narrative merit in mathematics and science are my strangers eager to be met. For me, the best narratives are those that bring me to places I have never been, to tell me things I have not known, and to keep me reading with the feeling of being alive in a human experience.
Ekeland’s book is an entwinement of philosophical views of scientists with metaphysics dealing with nature’s directives. It’s an embroidery of lively anecdotes involving illustrious individuals and great historical moments of human decisions. We go through the Peloponnesian Wars, Venetian concessions to the Hapsburg emperor Maximilian, Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos, and other enriching accounts. His explanations are clear, elegant, fluid, exhilarating, and suspenseful, reminding me of the effortless style of Richard Feynman. While reading, I felt compelled by a force of nature and purpose to learn about the best of all possible worlds.
Optimists believe this is the best of all possible worlds. And pessimists fear that might really be the case. But what is the best of all possible worlds? How do we define it? This question has preoccupied philosophers and theologians for ages, but there was a time, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when scientists and mathematicians felt they could provide the answer. This book is their story. Ivar Ekeland here takes the reader on a journey through scientific attempts to envision the best of all possible worlds. He begins with the French physicist Maupertuis, whose least action principle, Ekeland…
I’m a scientist at the University of Cambridge who’s worked on
environmental research topics such as jet streams and the Antarctic
ozone hole. I’ve also worked on solar physics and musical acoustics.
And other branches of science have always interested me. Toward the
end of my career, I became fascinated by cutting-edge issues in
biological evolution and natural selection. Evolution is far
richer and more complex than you’d think from its popular description
in terms of ‘selfish genes’. The complexities are central to
understanding deep connections between the sciences, the arts, and
human nature in general, and the profound differences between human
intelligence and artificial intelligence.
It achieves an important and unusual cross-fertilization between two
very different kinds of expertise. Both authors are highly
innovative, and creative, thinkers, Cohen in biology and Stewart in
mathematics.
Cohen is a biologist fascinated by the complexity
observed in the living world, and Stewart is an expert on the
mathematics of chaos and complexity. The result is a profound and
multifaceted view of many natural phenomena, and of evolution in
particular. It becomes very clear how selfish-gene theory fails to
take account of important evolutionary mechanisms.
Moving on from his books on chaos ("Does God Play Dice?") and symmetry ("Fearful Symmetry"), the author of this book deals with the wider field of complexity theory. The book tackles the question of how complexity arises in nature, of how life overcomes chaos and entropy to create developing order. Co-written with biologist Jack Cohen, the book will range across the central areas of modern science, from quantum mechanics and cosmology to evolution and intelligence, looking at the central questions of order, chaos, reductionism and complexity.
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