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?"

Comments

One Resource

[stoolpigeon]

- 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.

Re:One Resource

[MrNaz]

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.)

Re:One Resource

[LotsOfPhil]

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.

Re:One Resource

[Attila Dimedici]

Europeans believed that the Earth was round BEFORE there were any muslims.
My sentiment on this has nothing to do with muslims. The idea that educated Europeans thought the Earth was flat is a myth made up by certain 19th Century writers and popularized by people who were trying to show that Christianity is anti-science.

Re:One Resource

[l2718]

"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".

Re:One Resource

[Leafheart]

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

Re:One Resource

[octal_sio]

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.

Re:One Resource

[tomhudson]

In 200 years people will boggle that we believed that most people in the late middle ages thought the Earth was flat.

Here, let me fix that for you:

If we don't get rid of the fundie influence on education, in 200 years people will believe that most people living in the twentieth century were living in the middle ages. With the dinosaurs. And some dude named Flintstone.

Re:One Resource

[tomhudson]

Only the last two (#3 and #4) would take into account the fact that the mast is the last thing to disappear, and in nature, there are LOTS of sperical objects to serve as models (apples, oranges, grapes, etc), whereas I don't think they had contact lenses ... (your #3) It's by calculating the curve that they were able to deduce the radius of the earth. If the earth weren't round, the water would flow over the curved edge and disappear, and the seas would have dried up. Also, there would have been a current taking all ships with it over the edge. No such current, so the earth was round, not just "curved like a contact lense."

The "slight bulges" (your #4) fails for a similar reason - ships have to climb UP a bulge, which takes energy, so either they're going from higher to lower when they start (so no need for wind or rowers) or they're going from lower to higher (so the return doesn't need wind or rowers), so it fails based on simple obsedrvation - you aren't going "downhill" in either direction.

Hawking's Compilation

[eldavojohn]

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)

Re:Hawking's Compilation

[Jonathan]

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.

Re:Hawking's Compilation

[cpricejones]

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)

Re:Hawking's Compilation

[lastchance_000]

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.

St john's College New Mexico

[goombah99]

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)

Re:St john's College New Mexico

[Fallingcow]

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.

Learning or Collecting?

[Beetle B.]

If your goal is to learn the subject material, I wouldn't bother with most - equivalents from the 20th century may likely be better.

Don't forget Euclid's Elements. I also think there were some groundbreaking math books from the Arab era, but don't know if you can find them on the Internet - or whether there are translations available.

Re:Learning or Collecting?

[CraftyJack]

If your goal is to learn the subject material, I wouldn't bother with most - equivalents from the 20th century may likely be better.

Important question there. Keep in mind that notation and scientific writing style have changed significantly over the years.

Re:Learning or Collecting?

[Beetle B.]

That and seminal works are often overhyped. Don't get me wrong - they may have made a great impact, but they're usually indicative of the beginning of a new field, and it may have taken decades/centuries for the field to figure itself out. Only then is it presented in a better manner for learning.

Take calculus. Limits weren't put on a firm rigorous basis till people like Bolzano, Weierstrauss and Cauchy over a hundred years after Newton. And general integration theory didn't come around until the late 19th century and early 20th.

Of course, there are always exceptions...

Well, a modern classic

[OldFish]

Einstein's relativity paper is free:

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

Feynman

[Jamamala]

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

Physics

[clare-ents]

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.

Re:Physics

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

The Best American Science Writing

[eggoeater]

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.

Some English Links

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Some English Links

[genghisjahn]

Print to PDF. Email the PDF to your kindle email address. Costs ten cents.

Missing Option

[Smidge207]

6. Surak's "A Concise History of Vulcan Logic" (2430)

=Smidge=

Re:The Double Helix

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there's the fact that EVERY SINGLE MOTHERFUCKING STORY on biology gets tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong." It got old real, real fast.

Orthogonal view

[paiute]

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.

American Scientist top 100 of 20th century

[haystor]

A great list of great books:

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

Re:Future Classic

[Gotung]

Facts do have a liberal bias after all.

Re:Two more

[Ecuador]

Dear God. You compare "A brief history of time" to "Principia" and "On the Origin of Species"???
"A brief history of time" is an excellent read, however it is a "popular science" book that contains the minimum possible amount of physics and math. For, say, lawyers or doctors I guess it is as "scientific" as they can go with physics, but that in no way can make it a "classic book of science". I considered it a light (and very amusing) read when I was 14 when, in contrast, Newton's proofs were still a challenge to read much later.

Euclid's Elements

[Bueller_007]

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

Re:Future Classic

[ChrisMaple]

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.