Help create a JREF recommended science books list?

Your list already includes most of my recommendations, but I can add one more. The Fossil Trail by Ian Tattersall. It’s a fantastic book dealing with human evolution, the thing that makes it different is the way he charts the history of paleoanthropology and the disputes. I have read it more times than I have read The Selfish Gene.
 
Here are a few suggestions from my literary wanderings.

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth by Andrew H. Knoll

The Dependent Gene: The Fallacy of “Nature vs. Nurture” by David S. Moore

Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again by Andy Clark

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond

Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins by Steve Olson

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker
 
I'm quite new here, so can´t publish URL's yet. Quite a while ago I created an Amazon "Listmania" list called "A Critical Thinker (a.k.a. BS detector) booklist." The entries in it are the following:

1. "How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life" by Thomas Gilovich
2. "How to Lie With Statistics" by Darrell Huff
3. "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
4. "Beyond Numeracy" by John Allen Paulos
5. "Understanding Scientific Reasoning" by Ronald N. Giere
6. "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science" by Martin Gardner
7. "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan
8. "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time" by Michael Shermer
9. "Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science" by Carl Sagan
10. "Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking" by M. Neil Browne
11. "Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments" by T. Edward Damer
12. "Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life" by Howard Kahane
13. "Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argument" by Douglas N. Walton
14. "The Uses of Argument" by Stephen E. Toulmin
15. "A Rulebook for Arguments" by Anthony Weston
16. "Crimes Against Logic" by Jamie Whyte
17. "The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation" by Chaim Perelman
18. "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler
19. "The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making" by Scott Plous
20. "Introduction to Logic" by Irving M. Copi
21. "The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking. How to : Win an Argument, Defend a Case, Recognize a Fallacy, See Through a Deception" by Nicholas Capaldi


I own almost all those books with only a couple of exceptions (9 and 19.) Still have to read most of them fully though :p

Will update this list with links once I'm allowed to do so.
 
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some great suggestions on this thread, thanks to all of you, i'll use my amazon coupon on one of them!

I don't know if it's already been listed:
Science And Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, Lillienfeld, Lynn, Lohr

a great book and important, draws on social psychology too
 
Archaeology (archeology. US):

After the Ice: A global human history 20,000 - 5,000 BC, Mithen, S; Phoenix, 2003

Mithen casts himself as an unseen time traveller in this unusual but authoritative and approachable book
 
If not already listed:

Asimov's Guide to the Bible: A Historical Look at the Old and New Testaments by Isaac Asimov
Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible
by Robin Lane Fox
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by James, George Frazer
 
I don't know if its still in print, but you can get it second hand:

Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. It is science-lite but it tells of the historical development of ideas like no other book.

Francis Wheen's How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World. Not really science at all, but a great book for dipping into.
 
Well two quite awesome books that are a little older are:

Number: The Language of Science by Tobias Dantzig. It is about the evolution of mathematical thought from its most basic forms up until the time he was writing (sometime between 1920-1940 I believe.) ALSO

The Evolution of Physics by Albert Einstein (THE PHYSICIST) and Leopold Infeld. This is a pretty astounding book for the lay reader actually, describing the conceptual advances made in Physics from Platonic models up to the advent of relativity and quanta.

I am particularly interested in books such as these that focus a lot on the historical-anthropological developments of the sciences.
 
The unconscious quantum - Victor J Stenger.
 
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I just recommended this in another thread, but
The man who mistook his wife for a hat, and other clinical tales by oliver sacks

As to textbooks...I'm partial to"the structure and interpretation of computer programs"
I think more understanding of computer programing tells us just as much about the structure of possible universes as math.

There is actually a great quote from Scott Aaronson's blog "Why aren't physicists interested in computational complexity? Because if they were they'd be computer scientists" It won the anthropomorphic quote contest. (-:

I also think the giancoli textbooks rock for a straightforward and relatively light on calculus approach to physics.

Finally, in terms of science fiction I'm a huge fan of neal stephenson. The diamond age, zodiac and snowcrash just rock.
 
I looked through the whole list and didn't see these, sorry if they have been mentioned already...A local book store had the entire "On the shoulders of giants" series on sale for 5 bucks a piece...I couldn't resist.

On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres- Nicolaus Copernicus
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences- Galileo Galilei
Harmonies of the World- Johannes Kepler
Principia- Sir Isaac Newton

The Origin of Species- Charles Darwin
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time- Jonathan Weiner
 
zosima said:
I just recommended this in another thread, but
The man who mistook his wife for a hat, and other clinical tales by oliver sacks
Click to expand...


I'm an admirer of Sacks's earlier books: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, and Awakenings, and I have just finished reading his most recent edition, "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain", which is current an amazon bestseller. It is certainly interesting, many of the stories make you wonder about the strange relationship between music and the human mind, but it is more a series of interesting stories than a rigourous scientific book. I still think that his best book, as you said, was " The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", that was really interesting.

Also a few recomendations for books relevant to astronomy/cosmology that I have found interesting over the years would be "Cosmic plasma" by Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven, "Physics of the plasma universe" by one of his students Anthony Peratt, "The electric Sky" by donald scott, and "Craters, Cosmos, and Chronicles: A New Theory of Earth by Herbert R. Shaw. Although, if you are going to read "Craters, Cosmos, and Chronicles: A New Theory of Earth", I suggest you put aside a good couple of months, its a long read, and very academic, but worth it none-the-less.

Also of interest to this subject would be any other plasma cosmology related publication or journal, some of the most popular and highly regarded publications are pictured here; http://plasmascience.net/tpu/books.html
 
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