Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Classic Books of Science?

Posted by timothy on from the autodidacts-do-it-by-themselves dept.

half_cocked_jack writes "What are the classic books of science from throughout history? I'm currently reading On the Origin of Species on my Kindle 2, and it's sparked an interest in digging up some of the classic books of science. I'm looking for books from the ancient and medieval worlds and books from the golden ages of scientific discovery. Books like: Galileo's The Starry Messenger; Newton's Principia; Copernicus's On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres; and Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle. I know that I can likely find these books in a format I can use on my Kindle (found a few on Gutenberg already), but what I need is a checklist of these books to guide my reading. Suggestions?"

32 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. One Resource by stoolpigeon · · Score: 3, Informative

    - The Book Page - provides free on-line classic and not-so-well known books, articles and more. Antiquarian science texts and articles - complete with original wood-cuts and copper-plate Figures read "cover to cover", or use your Browsers search function to find and read specific sections. Choose from HTML, or pdf (eBook) or MS Reader format.
     
    Not a list like you are looking for, but may help in tracking down things you would be interested in reading.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    1. Re:One Resource by LotsOfPhil · · Score: 4, Informative

      In the 9th century, 500 years before Europeans started arguing whether the world was round, Al-Battani and his ilk calculated the circumference of the Earth at 40,253km. Correct to within 200km!

      Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth 1000 years before that. "Recent scholarship finds that since about the 3rd century BC, virtually no educated person in Western civilization has believed in a flat Earth." link.

      --
      This post climbed Mt. Washington.
    2. Re:One Resource by l2718 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Al-jabr" is one of laws for manipulating algebraic expressions. The man was named Al-Khawarizi, and from his name we derive a different word -- "Algorithm".

    3. Re:One Resource by Leafheart · · Score: 4, Informative

      Check these and a whole lot of other Arab scientist treaties. They are truly ahead of their time (as kept by western civilization of science advcance, and pearls of an age where the Muslins were the scientific lead.

      Ibn al-Haytham's - Book of Optics

      Muhammad ibn Musa Khwarizmi - The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing

      Disclamer: I'm not Muslim but I do think we need to give due credit where credit is due

      --
      --- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
    4. Re:One Resource by octal_sio · · Score: 4, Informative

      Arabic books and their authors indeed played an amazing role in the history of science. It's disturbing seeing them arrive to what they are now...

      Anyway, a few more Arabic classics off the top of my head:

      - Pretty much anything written by Ibn Sina. (The Canon of Medicine is a pretty good one)
      - Ibn AlNafis's Commentary on the Anatomy in Ibn Sina's Canon (where he described the circulatory system)
      - As parent mentioned, the original book on algebra, by AlKhwarizmi. The word "algorithm" is named after him, while "algebra" was named after his book. "Jabr" in Arabic means completion.
      - Omar Khayyam's many treatises on Maths and Astronomy.

      There's much more on Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy of Science and the Experimental Method, etc.

    5. Re:One Resource by DownWithMedia1.0 · · Score: 2, Informative

      You will find every classic ever written at this website. http://grtbooks.com/ Enjoy oh heady one.

    6. Re:One Resource by tomhudson · · Score: 2, Informative

      Beat me to it, dammit!

      It was obvious to any sea-farers that the earth was round - boats disappeared over the horizon, which could only be explained by either a curved surface, or them falling over the edge. Since most of them came back, the "curved earth theory" was never seriously questioned.

      So, how long have people been using boats? A loooong time.

      Q:Name Christopher Columbus' 4 ships.
      A:The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, and the one we don't speak about because it fell over the edge.

    7. Re:One Resource by chthonicdaemon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, Aristarchus was even earlier, and he even figured out that the earth rotates around the sun in addition to the diameter of the Earth, moon and sun and the earth and moon's orbit, with the correct order of the planets that they could observe at the time, all based on trigonometry and observation by unaided eye. Of course, his figures weren't perfectly accurate (notably the distance of the earth to the sun) but the method is sound and works well with more accurate measurements.

      --
      Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
    8. Re:One Resource by Yold · · Score: 2, Informative

      actually the word derived from Al-Kawarizi "Algorism". From which we get the word algorithm, sorry to split hairs, but this is slashdot after all =)

       

  2. Hawking's Compilation by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative

    On the Shoulders of Giants was a book I picked up on the cheap ... a weighty tome assembled by Stephen Hawking of classic books of science (some of which you listed).

    I think I got the hardcover for ~$8 at a used bookstore. Amazon seems to indicate it's not available on the kindle but here's what's in it:

    1. Nicolaus Copernicus "On the Revolutions of [the] Heavenly Spheres" (1543)

    2. Galileo Galilei "Dialogues [or Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations] Concerning Two [New] Sciences" (1638)

    3. Johannes Kepler Book Five of "Harmonies of the World" (1618)

    4. Sir Isaac Newton "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (1687)

    5. Albert Einstein "The Principles of Relativity: A Collection of Original Papers on the Special Theory of Relativity" (1922)

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Hawking's Compilation by lastchance_000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I doubt it's what you're thinking of, but the Feynman Lectures on Physics assumes very little starting knowledge, and covers quite a bit, including some pretty meaty material. The audio lectures a very nice to have, as well.

  3. Two more by mc1138 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Gray's Anatomy... not the show. And I'd add A brief history of time, although fairly recent, I'd tag it in their as a book that will most likely be considered on par with older books in a similar vein.

    --
    The musings of just another geek and his junk.
    1. Re:Two more by Pinkybum · · Score: 2, Informative

      "On The Origin Of Species" was a populist book also. From the wikipedia article: "The book was written to be read by non-specialists..." There was also a very interesting NPR show a couple of weeks ago about Darwin's life which went into how Darwin probably was writing the book for his wife who was adamantly against his theories.

  4. St john's College New Mexico by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Informative

    St. Johns teaches from the "great books". e.g. learn physics from Newton, etc...

    just nab their sylabus and you have not only what you want but also what you need, a list the great purged of historical anachronisms and ones that are poor for teaching. (e.g. you probably don't want to learn medicine from a list of bodily humors)

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:St john's College New Mexico by Fallingcow · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's always the classic list of classics (lol), the Great Books of the Western World list by Adler

      That site has tons of other book lists, too.

      Anyway, Adler's list is pretty much the best single answer to this question. I'd add Asimov's many, many essays on science (just start looking for them at used book stores, you'll have a dozen volumes before you know it) and Stephen J. Gould's essay collections.

  5. Well, a modern classic by OldFish · · Score: 5, Informative

    Einstein's relativity paper is free:

    http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5001

  6. Feynman by Jamamala · · Score: 4, Informative

    What about the Feynman Lectures on Physics?
    Although it's obviously much newer than all the books you listed, and is still under copyright.

  7. Physics by clare-ents · · Score: 5, Informative

    Einstein, The principles of relativity.

    Very readable papers on special relativity, essentially the same way it's taught now in a modern physics class (at least mine was).

    Feynman, QED

    Smart arse replaces great big pile of maths with pretty pictures with arrows in. Excellent.

    Copernicus, On the revolutions of Heavenly Spheres,

    Won't tell you very much, but worth it for the sheer horror of deriving the motions of the planets as viewed from Earth without using fractions.

    Feynman, Lectures

    The best presentation of a decent physics course there is. May only be comprehensible to people who already have a physics degree, I never tried reading it until I already had most of one at which point I was entranced.

    --
    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
    1. Re:Physics by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 3, Informative

      QED is fucking awesome. Feynman is about the most readable person you'll find on any of these lists (Darwin is dry as dust...100 pages of morphological bone changes in pigeons and you'll gnaw off your own limbs).

      I have only an advanced laymans understanding of physics (4 classes at the undergrad level) and his explanations were concise, clear, and very easy to follow.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  8. The Best American Science Writing by eggoeater · · Score: 3, Informative

    An annual publication gathering the best non-fiction science writing for the year. Usually edited by a good science writer (eg. Glick).
    I love them because of the variety and it usually gives you a good idea of the science without boring you with mundane details or being too pedantic.

    --
    $7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
  9. Some English Links by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative

    1. Nicolaus Copernicus "On the Revolutions of [the] Heavenly Spheres" (1543)

    2. Galileo Galilei "Dialogues [or Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations] Concerning Two [New] Sciences" (1638)

    3. Johannes Kepler Book Five of "Harmonies of the World" (1618)

    4. Sir Isaac Newton "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (1687)

    5. Albert Einstein "The Principles of Relativity: A Collection of Original Papers on the Special Theory of Relativity" (1922)

    I am not certain how easy it is to "capture" HTML to read on the Kindle later but here are some decent translations in English if you want them.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  10. Godel, Escher, Bach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Is not ancient, but I think a definite classic that will probably stand the test of time.

  11. another 20th cenury classic by rnaiguy · · Score: 2, Informative
    Erwin Shrodinger's "What is life?" is a fantastic collection of his ideas of the physical basis for life. He wrote this when the idea of a molecule was just coming into existence (referring to the genetic material as an "irregular crystal"), and inspired the first generation of molecular biologists.

    It's a great example of the power of "back of the envelope" estimations, and a very interesting read.

  12. Ooh! ooh! by a+whoabot · · Score: 2, Informative

    I suggest the New Organon by Francis Bacon. This edition seems to be available for the Kindle.

    Or how about even Aristotle's Physics? That's a nice book to read if you've never read any Aristotle or even any philosophy before. Bacon in the New Organon was trying to advocate a new method of science against the Aristotelian tradition.

    And it probably cannot be called a classic, but Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions would probably be interesting to you. And as a foil to Kuhn's work, Popper's Conjectures and Refutations.

  13. Paradigm Shift by giltwist · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn

    Coined the phrase "paradigm shift" and thoroughly smashed the romanticized view of science as linearly progressive.

  14. American Scientist top 100 of 20th century by haystor · · Score: 3, Informative

    A great list of great books:

    http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/100-or-so-books-that-shaped-a-century-of-science

    --
    t
  15. The Discoverers by Zentakz · · Score: 2, Informative

    I would highly recommend reading The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin. It is a fascinating book in itself, but more importantly, it references hundreds of important works that you might choose to explore more thoroughly.

  16. Euclid's Elements by Bueller_007 · · Score: 3, Informative

    For the love of God, Euclid's Elements. Available for free here:
    http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html

  17. Feynman's Lectures on Physics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-Set/dp/0201021153

  18. Re:Future Classic by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Informative

    Due to your post, I went back and quickly reread about a third of the book, and I have to admit that I was wrong as far as I can tell. I can't find any bias, and the science was better than I remembered.

    I did find two errors. On page 157 and onward, Bryson claims that airborne lead is forever. Actually, airborne lead has fallen dramatically in recent decades, probably by more than 90% in cities. On page 217, he repeats the claim that glass flows at room temperature.

    My apologies to you and Mr. Bryson.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  19. Started in the 1200's - 1300's by charnov · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Crusades along with the destruction of Baghdad, the center of worlds intellect, around 1250 started the decline. The fall of Muslim Spain in the 1400's and a rise in religious conservatism finished it off.

    Many of the troubles during those years were seen as punishment from God and ever since then there has been a movement to not go down that path again.

    Most of the knowledge from Spain passed to the West and kicked off the Renaissance.

    I am an American Jew, and I have to point out that the Muslim world was the center for thought and knowledge for a very long time. It's not like the Middle East is filled with idiots, they still have fantastic schools and scientists along with a thriving culture. They just aren't the center of the world anymore... honestly, I don't think we are anymore, either.

    --
    [RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
  20. Britannica - Great Books of the Western by Spartacus-Austin · · Score: 2, Informative

    Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952 by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. to present the western canon in a single package of 54 volumes. The series is now in its second edition and contains 60 volumes. The list of Great Books is maintained by the Great Books Foundation, and is part of the Great Books curriculum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World