A selection of books, as recommended by Robert, which you might also like to read.
Categories > Popular Science |
|
The Universe In A Nutshell
: The inspiring sequel to A Brief History of Time
|
|
By Stephen William Hawking
|
|
|
Pub: Bantam Press
ISBN: 0593048156
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
The Universe in a Nutshell is essential reading for all those who want to understand the universe in which we live.
Like many in the international scientific community, Professor Hawking is seeking to uncover the grail of science - the elusive Theory of Everything that lies at the heart of the cosmos. In The Universe in a Nutshell, he guides us on his search to uncover the secrets of the universe - from supergravity to supersymmetry, from quantum theory to M-theory, from holography to duality. In this most exciting intellectual adventure he seeks 'to combine Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Richard Feynman's idea of multiple histories into one complete unified theory that will describe everything that happens in the universe'. He takes us to the wild frontiers of science where superstring theory and p-branes may hold the final clue to the puzzle.
Stephen Hawking's first full length book since the worldwide bestseller A Brief History of Time, lavishly illustrated in full colour throughout.
|
|
Darwin's Dangerous Idea
: Evolution ad the Meanings of Life
|
|
By Daniel C. Dennett
|
|
|
Pub: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 014016734X
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
This work assesses Darwin's theory of evolution and looks at why it arises such heated debate among scientists, philosophers and sociologists. The book aims to show that Darwinism does not devalue the miracles of life.
|
|
Molecules of Emotion
: Why You Feel the Way You Feel
|
|
By Candace B. Pert with a foreward by Deepak Chopra
|
|
|
Pub: Pocket Books
ISBN: 0671033972
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
How do our thoughts and emotions affect our health? Are our bodies and minds distinct from each other or do they function together as part of an interconnected system? Candace Pert offers new scientific evidence of the power of our minds and emotions to affect our health.
|
|
The Blind Watchmaker
|
|
By Richard Dawkins
|
|
|
Pub: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 0140144811
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
A controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection, discovered by Darwin, is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?
|
|
Consciousness Explained
|
|
By Daniel C. Dennett
|
|
|
Pub: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 0140128670
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
This book revises the traditional view of consciousness by claiming that Cartesianism and Descartes' dualism of mind and body should be replaced with theories from the realms of neuroscience, psychology and artificial intelligence. What people think of as the stream of consciousness is not a single, unified sequence, the author argues, but "multiple drafts" of reality composed by a computer-like "virtual machine". Dennett considers how consciousness could have evolved in human beings and confronts the classic mysteries of consciousness: the nature of introspection, the self or ego and its relation to thoughts and sensations, and the level of consciousness of non-human creatures.
|
|
Superstrings
: A Theory of Everything?
|
|
By (Canto S.) P. C. W. Davies (Editor), Julian R. Brown (Editor)
|
|
|
Pub: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052143775X
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
Superstring theory is one of the most exciting and actively pursued branches of physics today. The far-reaching claims made for this theory would, if correct, provide the much sought-after Theory of Everything, the unification of physics. It would enable the fundamental building blocks of matter to be identified and amalgamated in a common description, with a unified theory of all the forces of nature. This book explains the theory for laymen, in an introduction to the subject which originated in the BBC Radio programme, Desperately Seeking Superstrings. A clear, concise, non-mathematical explanation of the theory and its profound implications is followed by transcripts of interviews with all the most important physicists involved in its development. Superstrings makes a fascinating topic at the forefront of modern scientific research accessible to physicists, philosophers and general readers alike.
|
|
Evolving the Mind
: On the Nature of Matter and the Origin of Consciousness
|
|
By A. Graham Cairns-Smith
|
|
|
Pub: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521637554
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
Evolving the Mind has two main themes: how ideas about the mind evolved in science; and how the mind itself evolved in nature. The mind came into physical science when it was realised, first, that it is the activity of a physical object, a brain, which makes a mind; and secondly, that our theories of nature are largely mental constructions, artificial extensions of an inner model of the world which we inherited from our distant ancestors. From both of these perspectives, consciousness is the great enigma. If consciousness evolved, however, it is in some sense a material thing whatever else may be said of it. Physics, chemistry, molecular biology, brain function and evolutionary biology - almost the whole of science - is involved, and there can be no expert in all these fields. So the style of the book is simple, almost conversational. The excitement is that we seem to be close to a scientific theory of consciousness.
|
|
Guns, Germs and Steel
: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years
|
|
By Jared Diamond
|
|
|
Pub: Vintage
ISBN: 0099302780
Available to buy from
- Amazon.co.uk
|
This work abandons the conventional distinctions between history and science. Diamond focuses on what ancient people were endowed with in the way of land, animals and plants, and on the confrontations between less and more advanced people to see how this led to today's inequalities.
|
Categories > Popular Science |
