Slashdot Mirror
The Best of Popular Science?
Stront asks: "No doubt like many on Slashdot, I am an avid reader of popular science, and am constantly on the search for good examples of the genre. Now, The Elegant Universe is probably the best on Superstrings; the excellent Genome received a very favourable review on Slashdot; and probably the most anticipated book on Quantum physics is the soon to be released The New Quantum Universe, the follow up to the highly rated The Quantum Universe. Now of the thousands of Popular Science books available, what does Slashdot recommend for the other innumerable sciences such as of relativity, molecular biology, consciousness, astronomy etc?"
Yes, Brain Greene's the Elegant Universe was a good read. Well off the top of my head I can only remember one good book I've read lately. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, it's an old book with the 1st edition published in the 70's, but still a fantastic read, it has some wonderful insights to evolution. In this book he recomends The Extended Phenotype, it's apparently an excellent read too, he says it's the pride and joy of his professional career
There is Carl Sagan's TV series and book called Cosmos, videos may be viewable in your local library. This too is an old series, but still very good. It's the real basics, great for lay persons, Carl Sagan has this knack for explaining and story telling.
Psi
Why did you add fadingsunshoppa to the URL? Amazon referral fee? I guess it's a nice way to make a few bucks off your Slashdot post.
Godel, Escher, Bach by D. R. Hofstadter was already mentioned here as an excellent introduction to cognitive research: no to the research itself, but rather to the motivations of the researchers. My review of the 20th anniversary edition was also published on Slashdot.
Darwin's Origin of Species is old, but not dated, and (due to different standards in scientific writing at the time?) it reads almost like a popular-science book.
Mathematics (a historian's view): try Fermat's Last Theorem by S. Singh or the older and less-known, but excellent, A History of Pi by Beckmann.
Artificial life research (introduction): Levy's Artificial Life. Somewhat related (but more on the AI side of things) is G. B. Dyson's Darwin Among the Machines.
- Tal Cohen
Several people already mentioned Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach. If you liked that, you'll also like The Mind's I, by Hofstadter and Dennett. It's a collection of thoughts and essays by the authors and various other big thinkers pursuing the nature of consciousness.
Siggy Wiggy Figgy Tiggy a bana bo Biggy!