The most recommended history of science books

To crack the mystery of consciousness requires that one understand the relationship between the physical dynamics of your brain and the psychological dynamics of your subjective experience.

One of the best books to start to build your intuition and understanding of the link between the way of matter and the way of Mind is Vision and Art. I’ve always been particularly enchanted with the book’s account of the famously enigmatic Mona Lisa smile. By understanding the mechanical activity of our mind’s visual circuits, we can start to appreciate how and why we respond to visual art at all.

While not really a kid’s book, Mysteries of the Quantum Universe is a fully illustrated graphic novel about a journey through time to visit the historical figures in quantum physics. At each location, the protagonist learns about the quantum world straight from the scientists themselves—fun! The language is a bit complex and so you may have to read it together. It may seem weird to “read” a graphic novel to a child, but I promise it works!

The discovery of insulin in early 1922 was a medical milestone that has since saved countless lives–my own included. Until this moment, a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes was a certain death sentence. But as diabetes clinician and historian of medicine, Chris Feudtner points out, the success of insulin has distorted historical accounts of diabetes by marginalising the experience of the patient in favour of narratives that focus on the development of medical technology to treat them. And Feudtner’s diagnosis is confined not just to diabetes but to the history of medicine in general. Following a personal epiphany that patients have an existence beyond X-rays and blood tests, Feudtner set out to address this problem by writing a history of diabetes as told from the perspective of patients. He does so magnificently and offers important insights about our relationship with technology that extend well beyond the treatment of diabetes.

This is a trilogy of historical fiction about, among many other things, the invention of the modern monetary system and the Scientific Revolution. Yes, it’s a heavy lift, as it’s nearly three thousand pages long, but it’s an incredible read. And if you want to get a sense of the sheer weirdness of the early days of science—both the people involved in it, as well as the ideas that they were playing with—these books are absolutely fantastic.

Here's a simple question: when did people learn exactly where babies come from?

As a historian and father of three, I'm embarrassed to say it never occurred to me to ask, despite all the times I've spent tracing the lives of people in the past and all the pre-natal visits I joined my wife for. The answer is it was shockingly recent.

Until the late nineteenth century, the only certainties were that sex sometimes led to pregnancy, that women had a monthly cycle that was somehow involved, and that men contributed a fluid "seed."

Everyone knows that ultrasounds are a relatively recent invention, but I realized that what separates us from the past is not simply that we can see our babies in the womb, while before, people couldn't. It's also that we know how the babies got there in the first place.

This survey of ancient and medieval Western science delves into theological, philosophical, social, and institutional aspects of developments in the physical and biological sciences, and in medicine.

Its illustrations are beautiful and apt, and the well-written exposition reflects the knowledge and erudition of one of my favorite teachers during my graduate study at the University of Wisconsin, a leading scholar of medieval science during the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.

My father and I were both speechless after reading this book. We were unable to put into words our rage at this nuclear energy cover-up. Instead of developing clean nuclear energy that could fuel the world, the world pursued nuclear energy that could destroy humanity. There is enough thorium to fuel the world and beyond for centuries. However, it cannot be used to make bombs. With the world in an energy crisis, we hoped writing letters to the Senator of Kentucky would give life to the idea of using thorium once again. Sadly, some only care about destroying cities. Everyone should read this book and learn about the alternative to uranium.

Wulf brings eighteenth-century Enlightenment science, philosophy, and thought to life like no other contemporary writer.

Chasing Venus is the amazing story of the first global scientific collaboration: the expeditions to measure the transit of Venus across the face of the sun in 1761 and 1769.

The result, if achieved, would enable scientists, for the first time, to calculate the distance from the Earth to the sun. The teams of astronomers and surveyors that fanned out across Europe, North America, and Asia to take the necessary measurements faced adversity ranging from wars and hostile locals to equipment failures and bad weather. Yet, against the odds, they succeeded, ushering in a new era in astronomy and scientific cooperation. 

I find this book valuable for its humanized approach to the history of science and its emphasis on the human response to major conceptual developments.

The book is rich with instructive and inviting treatments of major developments within the astronomical traditions in particular, from critical episodes within Greek, Babylonian, medieval, and early modern traditions, to decisive moments leading to what it termed the "Copernican Revolution."

Despite a limited coverage of pre-Copernican developments, the book’s stories around humans adopting and abandoning scientific concepts and models have wider impacts than any specific case, on our understanding of how knowledge develops and transforms. 

Koalas are one of Australia’s most loved and most well-recognized animals, and yet it’s surprising how little is known about them.  They feature prominently in Australian Indigenous stories, and yet were rarely used for clothing or artwork. When Europeans first arrived, it took them over 10 years before they even noticed these strange animals living in the trees above them and they have continued to bemuse scientists ever since. Ann Moyal, one of Australia’s most eminent historians of science, tackles the story of how we know what we do about koalas in an intriguing story about our patchy history with the koala, from neglect and exploitation and near extinction, to protection and international fame as the poster-child for Australian conservation.