Marshall P.
United States
Wichita
Kansas
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky
There is grandeur in this view of life, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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The purpose of this thread is to collect RSP book recommendations for 2012. So if you've read a book this year that you want to recommend to RSP please add it here. I'll be adding my books throughout the year as I finish them.
I'd like to keep this thread to just the recommendations. If you want to respond to comments on a book from this thread it might be a good idea to start a new thread.
Thanks.
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Marshall P.
United States
Wichita
Kansas
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky
There is grandeur in this view of life, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason By Victor Stenger.
Victor Stenger is a retired particle physicist who has been writing books on atheism since the 1980's. The thing is, most of his books simply haven't been very good. What I mean is that Stenger seems like a brilliant scientist and a strong atheist. He has some really intriguing ideas that will appeal to any atheist (which is why I keep reading his books). But he hasn't been able to effectively communicate them in book form thus far (in my opinion).
Stenger's approach is to treat his subject (whether that's God or some pseudo-science topic) as a scientific hypothesis, then proceed to demolish it based on his knowledge of particle physics. This makes for books that are very abrupt and lacking in philosophical depth. What I mean is that as a particle physicist, Stenger is approaching these questions almost as if he's in a brainstorming session in his office with other scientists where they propose some crazy ass idea then realize it won't work and toss it out. If any attempt is made to save the crazy idea it had better be parsimonious or Stenger will throw that right out too!
So a caricature of a Stenger argument would go something like this: "Let's see, if God is all powerful and all knowing then there shouldn't be suffering in the world. There is suffering in the world so I have refuted God. A common theist response is to claim that suffering is necessary for freewill but it's easy to establish that much suffering is caused entirely by natural phenomenon therefore God is not the most parsimonious explanation." He will then spend the rest of the book referring to how he refuted God by the problem of evil in Chapter 3.
The thing is, on a certain level Stenger is quite right. There's very little need for deep analysis to some of these questions (as established by many an RSP thread on the problem of evil I must say). As a true physicist he only gives enough analysis to uncover a problem and verify that any modification in response to the problem is less parsimonious than his theory (which is that there is no God or pseudo scientific phenomenon). At that point he considers his job done. And while certainly an efficient way of thinking, it doesn't make for the best of books.
Well, with this book, I think Stenger is finally learning his lesson. For one thing, it's clear that the wave of "New Atheist" authors (Dennet, Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins) has made an impression on him. From the very title of this book to its last page he is making an impassioned claim to be among the "new atheists". As such, he's seemed to learn that he needs to put some more "meat on the bones" of his arguments. So, right off the bat this book seems fuller and more fleshed out. One of the main things he does in this book is respond to the critics of the first wave of New Atheism. Stenger takes the time to provide extensive quotes from atheism critics and does a decent job responding to them. He catches a couple of blatant quote mines (which, once Stenger catches you doing that, you might as well be dead to him for all the weight he's going to give your future arguments) which are interesting.
Stenger relies less on physics here (though it's not -- and can't be -- entirely absent) and more on philosophical arguments. The book seems well researched and as always Stenger's writing style is laser-pointer-clear.
One thing that Stenger's not is a polemicist. He doesn't attack or belittle believers. The title of Dawkins book is "The God Delusion" (an inherently belittling title), whereas the title of an earlier Stenger book is "God, The Failed Hypothesis". And as a "hypothesis" is exactly how Stenger proceeds. He deals with ideas and arguments in the abstract. Not with "religions" or "faith" or groups of people who are deluded. The only people who come under attack by Stenger are individuals that he is quoting to show what he believes to be intentional deceit in their arguments.
Overall, this is probably not the greatest book on atheism. Because Stenger approaches the topic from such a clinical direction; it falls in a weird zone where theists are going to react to it as one giant exercise of missing the point and atheists are going to react with a whole lot of head nodding and "yes that's obvious". Both groups may not be entirely impressed.
Nevertheless, I do recommend it. Definitely more so than earlier Stenger books. He does have a very clear and concise writing style that extremely readable. And he does have some fresh ideas (he just usually doesn't expound on them enough, presenting them almost as if they are axiomatic).
In fact, he has some very interesting ideas that have had a profound affect on my philosophy. For one thing he shares the philosophy of "Model Dependent Realism" that Hawking also espouses and which I've been using as my point of reference in RSP lately. I'll have more to say about some of his other novel ideas in the next book recommendation that I post, so stay tuned...
In the meantime, do check out "The New Atheism". It's worth your time.
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Lawson
United States
Greenville
South Carolina
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker.
Now, I'm a bit -- OK, quite a lot -- of a Pinker fangirl. Still, I found this book mesmerizing. He makes the argument that violence and mistreatment, across all kinds of spectra, have declined fractally -- both in the recent past and also over the observable past.
It's fascinating stuff.
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Kelsey Rinella
United States
Rochester
New York
"I remember my own childhood vividly…I knew terrible things…
but I knew I mustn't let adults KNOW I knew…it would scare them." -Maurice Sendak
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Model Dependent Realism sounds an awful lot like Ronald Giere's view of science, which I think was most well-known from his Science without Laws. I agree, it was a fabulously helpful way of looking at things. I hope to come back and do a little research, so that I'll be able to link a nice, shorter piece on the topic. But there's a toddler who needs to be put to bed.
EDIT: Well, that didn't work. Kind of surprising, really--it seems like a natural thing to compare, but I'm finding nothing. I recall Science without Laws being pretty good, though.
As for my own recommendation, Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is starting out very well indeed, but I haven't finished it yet. But it's tough to feel educated about modern intellectual life without some familiarity with Kahneman and Tversky, if only an indirect one which might leave those names behind. They get more credit than anybody else for pointing out that classical economics is total crap.
This most recent book explores a way of looking at the mind as composed of two systems, one of which is speedy but prone to bias, while the other is slow, lazy, and reflective. As with much of his work, the conclusions are interesting but the methods of demonstrating them are not only fascinating but also presented in a fantastically accessible fashion.
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Rich Charters
United States
Chandler
Arizona
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The Poetry of Robert Frost.
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Steve Reynolds
United States
New Hampshire
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mdp4828 wrote: The purpose of this thread is to collect RSP book recommendations for 2012. So if you've read a book this year that you want to recommend to RSP please add it here. I'll be adding my books throughout the year as I finish them.
I'd like to keep this thread to just the recommendations. If you want to respond to comments on a book from this thread it might be a good idea to start a new thread.
Thanks.
"The 50 Dollars and Up Underground House Book" by Mike Oehler.
and
"Community Technology" by Karl Hess about an experiment in direct democracy and anarchism in part of Washington DC that crashed and burned but still is worth reading about in my opinion. The book has some examples of what was tried but is more about the internal politics of why it didn't work out.
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United States
Lincoln
Nebraska
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RSP-worthy recent reads of mine include:
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
and
The Immense Journey by Loren Eisely
Both are thought-provoking reads on the interplay of nature, science and religion.
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Jeff Brown
United States
Colorado Springs
Colorado
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Great book I read recently is Stumbling on Happiness
I don't know if its RSP but it is written by a Harvard Psychologist, about why humans are horrible at predicting what is going to make them happy.
http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/...
Another book that is more RSPish is The Paradox of Choice and is awesome as well. This talks about how the overabundance of choice is actually decreasing life satisfaction. Something that we should be talking about as market economies explode the number of choices availiable.
http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/006000...
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Ken
United States
Crystal Lake
Illinois
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I'm finishing off The Grand Design: Strategy and the US Civil War right now. It's an interesting look at the ACW because it focuses on how the two sides approached strategic concerns throughout the war and how that impacted their performance. It has a bit of self-contradiction (the chapter focusing on 1863 largely talks about how taking the Mississippi should really have been approached as a secondary objective, but other areas of the book discuss how important that was in the grand scheme of things), but it's at least a good treatment of the subject. The slavery issue gets a pretty good amount of coverage as it relates to war strategy.
Last year, I did finish off The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy-and What We Can Do to Get Happier. I haven't kept the fact that I've been diagnosed with depression a secret, and a psychologist friend of mine recommended this to me to help "change my perspective" on some things in the interest of avoiding future episodes. Very interesting discussion of the subject and how we can manage to lose ourselves in crap without really focusing on what we need to make ourselves happy. Also an interesting book in that it highlights how little research goes in to how happiness works and how people who are happy manage to get that way.
Next up is James McPherson's latest biography of Lincoln titled, shockingly, Abraham Lincoln. McPherson's one of my favorite authors on the ACW and a damned fine writer. So I'm looking forward to his treatment of the subject.
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Merchants of doubt shows how the same corrupt scientists that "doubted" the effect of smoking cigarettes on the human body, the consequences of DDT, and the presence of the ozone later are the same ones behind the manufactured controversy about global warming. The authors track a group of scientists (almost all physists) that have been peddling doubt about strong science to the media, congress, and the general public for years.
With the help of industry, and their privately funded organizations, they are routinely used as "experts" in policy making discussions, even though they have no experience in the fields they are discussing. In addition, they manufacturing "reports" that look legitimate, but have not been subject to peer review or any outside evaluation.
The book tracks the role of the same group of "scientists for hire" through different issues, their methods, and the shady organizations they lead.
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Lawson
United States
Greenville
South Carolina
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Zaphod wrote: Merchants of doubt shows how the same corrupt scientists that "doubted" the effect of smoking cigarettes on the human body, . . .
Oh! This reminded me of another book I loved from this past year:
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Among other things, it covers the history of Big Tobacco's push to hide the ugly truth about dangers of tobacco use. (I read that part aloud to my kids, who listened with horrified fascination.)
For that and many other reasons, it's a wonderful book.
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Jeff Brown
United States
Colorado Springs
Colorado
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perfalbion wrote: Last year, I did finish off The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy-and What We Can Do to Get Happier. I haven't kept the fact that I've been diagnosed with depression a secret, and a psychologist friend of mine recommended this to me to help "change my perspective" on some things in the interest of avoiding future episodes. Very interesting discussion of the subject and how we can manage to lose ourselves in crap without really focusing on what we need to make ourselves happy. Also an interesting book in that it highlights how little research goes in to how happiness works and how people who are happy manage to get that way.
This is one of my favorite books. I've used it a lot in my classes at school. I was going to mention it as a recommendation also.
I think that this is RSP worthy of discussion because it also talks about how our overabundance of stuff is not translating well to happiness. Another important topic that should be adressed by people who are living in a market economy.
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Aaron Potter
United States
Riverside
California
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Here's my current read which actually manages to cover politics and sexuality as well as its nominative subject:
The Elfish Gene, by Mark Barrowcliffe, is a coming-of-age story set in the late 70s and early 80s, where young Mark finds escape from his bland Coventry, UK existence in the new phenomenon of role-playing games. Besides being of likely interest to anyone on this site in general, Barrowcliffe deals quite frankly with the difficulties of being a 'late bloomer' puberty-wise, and the sometimes cringe-worthy embarassment that produced, as well as the political landscape of working-class England of the period.
The bits about growing up odd and alienated work rather well, and make for some very honest-seeming autobiography. Strangely, where the book often collapses is in its treatment of gaming, which the grown-up Barrowcliffe treats with undisguised disdain for the losers and dweebs who gravitated towards the hobby or, even worse, never 'outgrew' it. It's in those passages that his lingering resentment comes out worst, and one suspects after a while that he's still trying hard to impress the 'cool' kids, yet deep-down longs for that connection to a shared fantastical universe which he can no longer allow himself to experience. It's a little sad to see a guy who has clearly profitted hugely from his early exposure to the social and imaginative milieu of RPGs trying so hard to scorn the activities which helped give him the ability to write a book at all. Still, an interesting read.
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Not Just Wrong- SPECTACULARLY WRONG.
Spain
Texas
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I just finished reading Stefan Aust's book on the Red Army Faction, Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
http://www.amazon.com/Baader-Meinhof-Inside-Story-R-F/dp/019...
This is the most recent and comprehensive history of the terror gang that haunted Germany during the late 1960's and early 1970's.
What I find fascinating about it is that Aust, who knew and met many people who were either members or 'fellow travelers' of the RAF, gives the most comprehensive study of why so many intelligent, thoughtful, and well meaning people succumbed to an ideology of violent revolution against the West German state. An interesting comparison that he makes is that the process whereby men and women gradually fell into the RAF is very similar to that of the modern 'Jihadist' style of terrorist, even if the goals that each espouse is radically dissimilar. Also fascinating are the glimpses into the much more 'professional' terrorism practiced by the PLO, which was not nearly as ideological as the Maoist fanaticism of the RAF and far more cynical and pragmatic.
If anyone is interested in how ideology can 'trap' people, or is interested in looking at a seminal period of West German history, this is a very important book.
Darilian
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Marshall P.
United States
Wichita
Kansas
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky
There is grandeur in this view of life, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where do the Laws of Physics Come From? By Victor Stenger.
When he was writing A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking said his publisher told him that every equation he put in the book would reduce his readership by half. He decided to include E=mc^2 anyway.
I would say that popular science books are written at an intelligent middle school level. I'm including Sagan, Hawking, Brian Greene, Phil Plait, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carrol among others. Their books take complex concepts expressed in advanced mathematics and attempt to render them as comprehensible concepts in plain language with no math involved. This is generally accomplished by using analogies to our everyday experience (the loaf of raisin bread for the Big Bang and a bowling ball on a trampoline for space-time are two famous examples). In so doing the books make great strides in bringing the fundamental ideas on how our universe works to the average person, but something is necessarily lost in the translation. Comprehension by the reader is necessarily distorted (think of trying to explain quantum mechanics or string theory without reference to a single equation!)
Here, Stenger is trying something new. Instead of rendering modern physics in middle school terms, he has written a book in two parts. The first half of the book renders the theory in terms of an intelligent high schooler. The writing is less "story like" than other popular science, the concepts aren't dumbed down quite as much, and algebra is used throughout. In the second part (which is comprised of the many appendices taking up half the book and paralleling the first part), Stenger renders the theories at an Undergraduate level (and for technical undergraduates at that. Business and Communication majors should stick with the first half), explanations amount to textbook parlance and the math includes calculus and linear algebra.
Indeed, I could easily see this book as being a supplement in a college physics class (maybe even in the most advanced high school class). All of this is to say that this book will not be for everybody.
However, the ideas expressed in this book are profound and deep and should be considered by anyone who wants to think seriously about the nature of reality. This book is the culmination of my reading on popular science and it is so impactful that I believe I'll be referencing it regularly for the rest of my life.
It's that important of a book.
I would give it my highest possible recommendation except for one thing. Very few people, I think, want to read a book like this. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. This book requires significant effort for the average reader (including myself - I haven't made it though all the appendices yet, and I'm really struggling with them even though I'm an engineering graduate who had the requisite math).
If you want to put in that effort, and you want to be challenged, and you want to be confronted with an entirely novel way of thinking about the laws of nature, then by all means this is your book.
What do I mean confronted by an entirely novel way of thinking about the laws of nature?
Well, Stenger is an old retired physicist. He's got his own personal model of modern physics all worked out -- it's just not the popularly accepted model by other physicists. Let me explain...
Stenger spends considerable effort espousing a philosophy which he doesn't give a name to, but which seems equivalent to what Hawking called "Model Dependent Realism". It is the philosophy that an objective reality exists independent of us and our ability to observe it, but we can only comprehend this reality through "models" which necessarily abstract the objective nature of reality. "Models", therefore, are best not thought of as true or false, rather useful or not useful (I part ways a little in the definition here in that I don't mind referring to a model as "true" as long as it's understood that truth is defined as correspondence to objective reality, which is functionally the same as "useful").
Stenger is mostly referring to physics models, but it seems to me that the same philosophy can be applied to our own personal "mental models" of the world that are constructed real time by are senses and perceived by our conscious minds. Indeed, consciousness itself seems to be a real-time model of reality that is never "true" only more or less corresponding to that reality. Stenger doesn't deal with the theory of mind though, this whole paragraph is my own digression.
Back to the book, Stenger points out that all physics models can be formulated in many different but equivalent mathematical ways. And the way you formulate your model influences the way you think about the world. For example, the most popular formulation of General Relativity strictly interpreted removes gravity as a "force". Instead objects move on minimum length paths on a four dimensional geodesic surface. "Gravity" is simply our interpretation of the resulting behavior of matter. There are other way to formulate GR, though, that maintain a Euclidean space-time.
Indeed, the entire concept of "force" can be formulated out of our models if we so choose (which is bizarre to a practicing structural engineer who literally walks around imagining little force vectors interacting with every object he perceives).
The point is that Stenger has derived a particular formulation of physics not widely accepted by the physics community, but for which every component of the formulation has been accepted by some physist and none have been outright falsified. Stenger doesn't advertise his formulation as "true" (or even as "better") but he does think it is one of most parsimonious and he maintains that it resolves some of the thornier interpretations of Quantum Mechanics (EPR paradox and double slit experiment).
In this book Stenger is basically re-deriving all of modern physics (Newtonian Mechanics, Maxwell's equations, Special and General Relativity, and a smattering of Quantum Mechanics) in terms of his model.
One of the keys to his model is what he calls "Point of View Invariance". This is actually a common and well accepted concept in physics. It's the idea that the laws of physics do not depend on any one particular point of view, but are instead general for all observers. This is non-controversial and it's been well accepted since Einstein at least, but I've never seen such a dedicated application of the concept beginning with Newtonian Mechanics as Stenger provides here.
Stenger maintains that the laws of physics can be derived by making empirical measurements of some phenomenon, quantifying that phenomenon mathematically, then applying mathematical "operators" to that quantification to make the description point of view invariant. When he does this he shows how many of the "great laws" of nature emerge automatically.
For example, conservation of energy is a necessary law given time symmetry (or point of view invariance with respect to time. I.e. the origin of t=0 in your experiment is arbitrary). This is a consequence of Noether's theorem. Once again, not particularly controversial, but Stenger keeps going. Translation symmetry leads to conservation of linear momentum. Similarly for rotation symmetry and angular momentum. All other conservation laws (charge, baryon number, color, etc...) have corresponding symmetries. General Relativity can be derived given a few experiments near the speed of light and point of view invariance transformations. Stenger even maintains that certain quantum mechanical phenomenon such as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Pauli Exclusion Principal incorporate PoVI in their derivation.
Stenger goes further. He maintains that the Big Bang itself can be understood in terms of PoVI if we posit a symmetric Universe (one originating with the same Big Bang as ours but traveling in the opposite time dimension). He calls it quantum tunneling from a void. The "void" is an important concept to Stenger. While the void contains literally nothing, it does posses by definition all of the symmetries that are used in Noether's theorem to derive the conservation laws. Therefore, to Stenger, the empirically observed conservation laws constitute evidence for (or are at least consistent with) our Universe emerging uncaused from a quantum event in the void.
This is good stuff for a brain to think about.
Stenger has an interesting idea about entropy too. He maintains that his quantum universe which began at the Plank scale would have had the maximum allowable entropy by definition (thus eliminating the paradox of why the Big Bang began with such low entropy). He maintains that the entropy of the Universe started out at a maximum and has never been lowered. The low entropy configuration we experience now (and which allows room for the development of complex structures and life) is a result of inflation. Inflation essentially creates room for more entropy -- a LOT of room. When the quantum Universe inflated the maximum allowed entropy increased dramatically while the actual entropy only increased a little. This created the condition which allows the Universe to develop complex stars, galaxy's, and life as its entropy deficit unwinds and it gradually heads back to maximum entropy.
This is a nifty explanation, but it also introduces one of Stenger's weaknesses. He never quite gets around to addressing all the potential problems with his models. I know, for example, that physicist Sean Carrol would have a lot of heartburn with Stenger's entropy explanation (see his excellent book From Eternity to Here) Carrol's big thing is explaining how the entropy of the Universe got so low and his explanation is fundamentally different than Stenger's. If I understand Carrol's model correctly it would require breaking time symmetry to follow Stenger's scenario. A time symmetry which Stenger is relying on to build his model. This potential contradiction is never resolved in the book.
But Stenger one ups Carrol by catching on to the fact that our arrow of time is defined by the direction of increasing entropy. Which, of course, Carrol understands but Stenger correctly (in my view) points out that this makes our arrow of time an emergent property of macroscopic systems (because individual particles don't increase in entropy). In his book, Carrol derives the arrow of time from entropy but asserts that it is "fundamental". On this one I'm with Stenger. And, according to Stenger, if you throw the arrow of time out of partical physics (that is let particles zig zag through time much as they do through space) you can eliminate many of the apparent paradoxes of quantum mechanics. Yes, this involves time traveling particles which is why most physicists don't adhere to that model. But Stenger points out that the model is tot falsified by any empirical observation.
I want to believe Stenger and accept his models, but I just quite can't because in too many places (like entropy and inflation above) I find him contradicted by other reputable physicists and I haven't yet seen his response.
I would pay good money to sit in the same room with Stenger and Carrol, believe me.
Anyway, the book. In this book Stenger accomplishes something beautiful. He presents the laws of physics as emerging naturally from point of view invariance which, if taken farther, could allow us to understand the origin of the Universe and of complexity. But this is a peculiar kind of beauty. It's the beauty of a mathematical derivation. Is the Pythagorean theorem beautiful? If you think it is, then this might be a good book for you. If, like most people, you wouldn't connect the words "math" and "beauty" then this book might be a dreary slog.
Judge for yourself.
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Not Just Wrong- SPECTACULARLY WRONG.
Spain
Texas
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mdp4828 wrote:
Stenger spends considerable effort espousing a philosophy which he doesn't give a name to, but which seems equivalent to what Hawking called "Model Dependent Realism". It is the philosophy that an objective reality exists independent of us and our ability to observe it, but we can only comprehend this reality through "models" which necessarily abstract the objective nature of reality. "Models", therefore, are best not thought of as true or false, rather useful or not useful (I part ways a little in the definition here in that I don't mind referring to a model as "true" as long as it's understood that truth is defined as correspondence to objective reality, which is functionally the same as "useful").
Kant discusses this in the Critique of Pure Reason, when he talks about the difference between perception of things, and 'Things in Themselves', and the difference between the two.
Stenger's take is interesting, in that he seems to be building upon the concept of coherency- the extent to which a scientific model builds interesting new questions and answers old questions in a particular field of study. Be interesting to check this out.
Darilian
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Jorge Montero
United States
St Louis
Missouri
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Darilian wrote:
Kant discusses this in the Critique of Pure Reason, when he talks about the difference between perception of things, and 'Things in Themselves', and the difference between the two.
Stenger's take is interesting, in that he seems to be building upon the concept of coherency- the extent to which a scientific model builds interesting new questions and answers old questions in a particular field of study. Be interesting to check this out.
Darilian
And ultimately, the entire idea comes back to Plato's Cave. Dealing with the difference between perception and reality is one of the oldest questions in philosophy.
There's some that even question the existence of such thing as an objective reality, but that doesn't make much sense to me.
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Not Just Wrong- SPECTACULARLY WRONG.
Spain
Texas
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hibikir wrote: Darilian wrote:
Kant discusses this in the Critique of Pure Reason, when he talks about the difference between perception of things, and 'Things in Themselves', and the difference between the two.
Stenger's take is interesting, in that he seems to be building upon the concept of coherency- the extent to which a scientific model builds interesting new questions and answers old questions in a particular field of study. Be interesting to check this out.
Darilian
And ultimately, the entire idea comes back to Plato's Cave. Dealing with the difference between perception and reality is one of the oldest questions in philosophy. There's some that even question the existence of such thing as an objective reality, but that doesn't make much sense to me.
I think that Derrida needs to put the bong, ontologically speaking.
Darilian
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Josh M
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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I really enjoyed this somewhat obscure book. The author, while writing from a definite and distinct point of view, takes on the history of Christianity (and Judaism) in an education and amusing way. While I typically delete the book off of my Kindle when I was done, I left this one on as I'm sure I'll want to re-read it and take that information again in.
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Josh M
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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This is a mind-blowing book that beautifully entwines sociology with economics and explains why we all tend to do things without even knowing it sometimes. Ever grab a newspaper off the rack but you don't grab the top one? This book explains things like that and is horribly eye-opening. I highly recommend diving into this one.
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Darilian wrote: Stenger's take is interesting, in that he seems to be building upon the concept of coherency- the extent to which a scientific model builds interesting new questions and answers old questions in a particular field of study. Be interesting to check this out.
It seems to me to be essentially just stating Popper's view of science, which I guess most would see as the best take on why science works out there today.
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SH Wong
Singapore
Singapore
Singapore
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As usual, I have been reading children books. If you want to get your kids into science, I recommend The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Snowflake Bentley. The former for fascination, the latter for determination.
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Neil Carr
United States
Barre
Vermont
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mdp4828 wrote: Stenger spends considerable effort espousing a philosophy which he doesn't give a name to, but which seems equivalent to what Hawking called "Model Dependent Realism". It is the philosophy that an objective reality exists independent of us and our ability to observe it, but we can only comprehend this reality through "models" which necessarily abstract the objective nature of reality. "Models", therefore, are best not thought of as true or false, rather useful or not useful
Wait a sec... that's not what your typical physicist is doing?
What the heck are they doing?
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Joe Norris
United States
Dublin
Ohio
Flight of the seabirds, scattered like lost words, wheel to the storm and fly. Fare thee well now, let your life proceed by it's own design. Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.
To seek the sacred river Alph, to walk the caves of ice, to break my fast on honey dew and drink the milk of paradise... I had heard the whispered tales of immortality, the deepest mystery from an ancient book I took a clue.
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A fairly scathing, but well written critique, of the rise of faith in western society and the sacrifice of reason and why it had to happen in this way.
A fascinating look at the life and ministry of Jesus through the writings of the gospels. A very well written, if not somewhat controversial treatise on the subject.
For me, this is an essential reference book to have on any shelf. Though in all fairness to that statement I collect reference books. 
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Marshall P.
United States
Wichita
Kansas
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky
There is grandeur in this view of life, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there By Richard Wiseman.
This book is an entertaining romp through the sordid history of paranormal claims. The author is a magician and skeptical investigator and he knows his stuff. He digs up some of the most interesting paranormal claims from throughout history and engagingly retells them complete with the results of any investigations and as a bonus he generally delves into the neurological reasons that one could fall for the claim.
He also includes a series of side bars that instruct you on how to perform paranormal tricks or even on how to trick your own brain!
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