Science
Published:
A collection of notes from scientific books.
Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: Complexity Theory, David Krakauer
A collection of essays exploring everything complexity science. Subjects include the importance of biodiversity, hiearchichal system structures, why banking systems collapse, the importance of metaphors, the origin of life, and more.
Notes - Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: Complexity Theory
Flights of Fancy, Richard Dawkins
A biological exploration of everything flight.
Range, David Epstein
Why you should aim to be a generalist. This book outlines the benefits of breadth of knowledge, as opposed to depth of knowledge.
Make it Stick - The Science of Successful Learning, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brow
Current scientific consensus on how to best improve learning outcomes.
Consilience, E.O. Wilson
A book in which the author vouches for consilient academia, especially in the humanities. Consilience is a “jumping together” of knowledge by linking facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.
The Social Conquest of Earth, E.O. Wilson
The social evolution of our species from the perspective of an entomologist who studied social insects. Really interesting if you’re curious about human nature.
Notes - The Social Conquest of Earth
Breath, James Nestor
Book all about the importance of breath, especially nosebreathing and avoiding mouthbreathing. Outlines the health benefits of proper breathing (something that we’re always doing) and some breath work practices.
Starry Messenger, Neil deGrasse Tyson
A look at society from the perspective of an astrophysicist. Not my favorite, to be honest. Still a nice read if you’re a techno-optimist and interested in neat scientific facts.
Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows
Masterclass on how to think with a systems lens. This will change the way you think, and consequently how you view the world around you.
Why We Get Sick, The new science of Darwinian medicine (1996), Nesse & Williams
Exceptional application of darwinian insight to understanding our physiology, exploring the questions of why we get sick, why we age, why we evolved to reproduce sexually (rather than asexually), and much more. Expands on the limitations of traditional medicine on treating proximate causes rather than ultimate causes. Very interesting and still applicable almost 30 years later; this will change how you view modern medicine.
The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
The GOAT.
A World Beyond Physics, Stephen Kauffman
A challenge to conventional physics to help explain the origin of life.
Notes - A World Beyond Physics
Drunk, Edward Slingerland
Book exploring the history of alcohol and its role in the flourishing of a social speecies. I was more pessimistic about alcohol prior to reading this; despite the obvious costs, when we look deeper there is a case to be made about alcohol’s value. Recommend.
Behave, Robert Sapolsky
This book is all about human behaviour. The thrust of this book is to invoke the various timescales that precede that behaviour (seconds to hours to weeks to millenia before the behaviour), and to connect the scientific disciplines (neurobiology, biochemistry, endocrinology, evolutionary biology, etc.) into a consilient whole to explain why we do things.
Cosmos, Carl Sagan
Wonderful interdesciplinary exhibit on the expansive universal system we find ourselves floating through: the cosmos.