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Classic Books of Science?
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?"
You may be interested to read about the role that the Middle East played in the development of modern science. While they are not very mainstream (hey, history gets written by those on top at any point, which at the moment happens to be Western nations), there are many books that deal with the advanced science that was being carried out in that region. Here are some tidbits to get you started:
Modern optics was pioneered by the discoveries of Ibn Sahl (who discovered Snell's law 800 years before Snellius renamed it).
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!
Al-Jabr is the Arab mathematician who discovered (or invented, whichever way you lean on that topic) algebra. It is still named after him.
Good luck with this. Scientific history is fascinating!
(Full disclosure: I am a Muslim, which is why I find this topic so interesting.)
I hate printers.
The problem is that most of these are not particularly good translations and lack commentary -- you won't be able to follow Newton, for example, without the detailed commentary that other editions, such as those edited by the historian of science Bernard Cohen, have. It isn't just converting Latin to English -- the mathematical techniques themselves need "translation" as nobody today does math using the primitive methods available to Newton.
I would add to this a some modern classics that are not physics books:
- Watson: The Double Helix
- Hofstadter: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
- Gesteland, Cech, and Atkins: The RNA World
- Stephen J. Gould: The Mismeasure of Man (or Punctuated Equilibrium or another one of his books)
Although I do not adhere to it strictly (for one instance, I keep a copy of Herodotus by the hopper for intermittant rereading), I have rules of thumb that I go by when considering books worth my while:
1. Read fiction by the dead
2. Read nonfiction by the living.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Print to PDF. Email the PDF to your kindle email address. Costs ten cents.
Sorry about the mess.