book pickings

a visual way to explore the brain pickings book archive :: otlet's shelf theme :: back to brain pickings

CREATIVITY :: DESIGN :: SCIENCE :: HISTORY :: PSYCHOLOGY :: ART

science

  1. The Art of Richard P. Feynman: Images by a Curious Character Richard Feynman, artist? You bet! The beloved physicist’s little-known sketches and drawings, most of nudes:

    The Art of Richard P. Feynman: Images by a Curious Character

    Richard Feynman, artist? You bet! The beloved physicist’s little-known sketches and drawings, most of nudes:
  2. A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love Richard Dawkins “People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.” Richard Dawkins on evidence in science, life, and love in a letter to his 10-year-old daughter

    A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love

    Richard Dawkins

    “People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.”

    Richard Dawkins on evidence in science, life, and love in a letter to his 10-year-old daughter
  3. Documenting Science Berenice Abbott Photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) might be best-remembered for her striking black-and-white prints of New York’s changing face in the 1930s, but she was also intensely interested in science and in making the abstract elegance and beauty of science visible and concrete. In 1939, she began experimenting with scientific imagery and capturing the whimsy of physics, mathematics and chemistry in her minimalist yet dramatic black-and-white photos. Documenting Science collects the best of that work, which culminated with the Physical Science Study Project at MIT in 1958.

    Documenting Science

    Berenice Abbott

    Photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) might be best-remembered for her striking black-and-white prints of New York’s changing face in the 1930s, but she was also intensely interested in science and in making the abstract elegance and beauty of science visible and concrete. In 1939, she began experimenting with scientific imagery and capturing the whimsy of physics, mathematics and chemistry in her minimalist yet dramatic black-and-white photos. Documenting Science collects the best of that work, which culminated with the Physical Science Study Project at MIT in 1958.
  4. Big Questions from Little People: and Simple Answers from Great Minds Gemma Elwin Harris “You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. … PS You have to be brave.” Why we fall in love, what we’re all made of, how dreams work, and more deceptively simple mysteries of living, explained by prominent scientists in answers to children’s questions.

    Big Questions from Little People: and Simple Answers from Great Minds

    Gemma Elwin Harris

    “You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. … PS You have to be brave.”

    Why we fall in love, what we’re all made of, how dreams work, and more deceptively simple mysteries of living, explained by prominent scientists in answers to children’s questions.
  5. The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date Samuel Arbesman “No one learns something new and then holds it entirely independent of what they already know. We incorporate it into the little edifice of personal knowledge that we have been creating in our minds our entire lives.”

    The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

    Samuel Arbesman

    “No one learns something new and then holds it entirely independent of what they already know. We incorporate it into the little edifice of personal knowledge that we have been creating in our minds our entire lives.”
  6. Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life Massimo Pigliucci “There is no such thing as an intuitive person tout court. Intuition is a domain-specific ability.” The science of intuition:

    Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life

    Massimo Pigliucci

    “There is no such thing as an intuitive person tout court. Intuition is a domain-specific ability.”

    The science of intuition:
  7. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False Thomas Nagel “Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.” How our hunger for definitive answers robs us of the intellectual humility necessary for understanding the universe and our place in it.

    Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False

    Thomas Nagel

    “Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.”

    How our hunger for definitive answers robs us of the intellectual humility necessary for understanding the universe and our place in it.
  8. Discord: The Story of Noise Mike Goldsmith The science of why the wail of the baby Universe sounded like muffled highway traffic.

    Discord: The Story of Noise

    Mike Goldsmith

    The science of why the wail of the baby Universe sounded like muffled highway traffic.
  9. The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science Matt Lamothe Some of today’s most celebrated artists create scientific illustrations and charts to accompany short essays about the most fascinating unanswered questions on the minds of contemporary scientists across biology, astrophysics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, anthropology, and more. The questions cover such mind-bending subjects as whether there are more than three dimensions, why we sleep and dream, what causes depression, how long trees live, and why humans are capable of language.

    The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science

    Matt Lamothe

    Some of today’s most celebrated artists create scientific illustrations and charts to accompany short essays about the most fascinating unanswered questions on the minds of contemporary scientists across biology, astrophysics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, anthropology, and more. The questions cover such mind-bending subjects as whether there are more than three dimensions, why we sleep and dream, what causes depression, how long trees live, and why humans are capable of language.
  10. Measurement by Paul Lockhart “What makes a mathematician is not technical skill or encyclopedic knowledge but insatiable curiosity and a desire for simple beauty.” Mathematician Paul Lockhart invites us to “make patterns of shape and motion, and then [try] to understand our patterns and measure them.” What results as we step away from physical reality and immerse ourselves in the imaginary — and imaginative — world of mathematical reality is a thing of infinite beauty and infinite fascination.

    Measurement

    by Paul Lockhart

    “What makes a mathematician is not technical skill or encyclopedic knowledge but insatiable curiosity and a desire for simple beauty.”

    Mathematician Paul Lockhart invites us to “make patterns of shape and motion, and then [try] to understand our patterns and measure them.” What results as we step away from physical reality and immerse ourselves in the imaginary — and imaginative — world of mathematical reality is a thing of infinite beauty and infinite fascination.
  11. Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy How a tiny cluster of genes and proteins gave rise to zombie and vampire mythology.

    Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus

    by Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy

    How a tiny cluster of genes and proteins gave rise to zombie and vampire mythology.
  12. The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2: From “Kubla Khan” to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Russ Kick Some of today’s most exciting graphic artists adapt a remarkable spectrum of literature since 1800, spanning everything from “the bad boys of Romanticism” — Keats, Byron, and Shelley — to cornerstones of science and philosophy like Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.

    The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2: From “Kubla Khan” to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray

    by Russ Kick

    Some of today’s most exciting graphic artists adapt a remarkable spectrum of literature since 1800, spanning everything from “the bad boys of Romanticism” — Keats, Byron, and Shelley — to cornerstones of science and philosophy like Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.
  13. Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond Robert R. Provine Why it’s easier to prevent a crying spell than to stop one already underway, and more.

    Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond

    Robert R. Provine

    Why it’s easier to prevent a crying spell than to stop one already underway, and more.
  14. Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist Christof Koch “There is no reason why this web of hypertrophied consciousness cannot spread to the planets and, ultimately, beyond the stellar night to the galaxy.” Neuroscientist Christof Koch explores how subjective feelings, or consciousness, come into being, and why we should expect the Internet to become sentient.

    Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

    Christof Koch

    “There is no reason why this web of hypertrophied consciousness cannot spread to the planets and, ultimately, beyond the stellar night to the galaxy.”

    Neuroscientist Christof Koch explores how subjective feelings, or consciousness, come into being, and why we should expect the Internet to become sentient.
  15. The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives Rosalind D. Cartwright “Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original….it is a continuing act of creation. Dream images are the product of that creation.” A fascinating read on the science of sleep, the relationship between dreaming and depression, and how dreams help regulate our negative emotions.

    The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives

    Rosalind D. Cartwright

    “Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original….it is a continuing act of creation. Dream images are the product of that creation.”

    A fascinating read on the science of sleep, the relationship between dreaming and depression, and how dreams help regulate our negative emotions.
« Previous — 2 of 7 — Next »