anthropology, biology, cognitive sciences, ethology, climate, evolution, brains, language, the future -- not to mention Patrick O'Brian novels and the Science Masters series.
You can click on the topics to see a collection of favorite books on the subject.
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Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices: The Diary of Brian Eno (Faber and Faber, 1996). -
UBS amazon.com Powell's
Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The Rise of Neobiological Civilization (Addison-Wesley 1994).-
UBS amazon.com Powell's
David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology : The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (Knopf 1997). -
From Kirkus Reviews , 08/01/97:
"Noble (History of Science/York Univ., Canada) argues that the apparent dichotomy between science and religion, between the
physical and the spiritual, is an artifact of recent history. He examines nearly 2,000 years of Western history to support his
thesis. Noble (A World Without Woman, 1992) cites two early impulses behind the urge to advance in science and technology:
the conviction that apocalypse is imminent, and the belief that increasing human knowledge helps recover knowledge lost in
Eden. For example, Columbus's writings show that he believed the Orinoco to be one of the rivers of Paradise and expected the
End Times to come within a century or so. Indeed, the metaphor of a return to Eden runs through the writings of advocates of
science, exploration, and technology from the earliest days." From the flap copy: "The narrative moves into our own time through the technological enterprises of the last half of the twentieth century: nuclear
weapons, manned space exploration, Artificial Intelligence, and genetic engineering. Here the book suggests that the
convergence of technology and religion has outlived its usefulness, that though it once contributed to human well-being, it has
now become a threat to our survival. Viewed at the dawn of the new millennium, the technological means upon which we have
come to rely for the preservation and enlargement of our lives betray an increasing impatience with life and a disdainful
disregard for mortal lives. David F. Noble thus contends that we must collectively strive to disabuse ourselves of the inherited
religion of technology and begin rigorously to re-examine our enchantment with unregulated technological advance."
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Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason (Simon and Schuster 1988).-
"We are evidently unique among species in our symbolic ability, and we are certainly unique in our modest ability to control the conditions of our existence by using these symbols. Our ability to represent and
simulate reality implies that we can approximate the order of existence and bring it to serve human
purposes. A good simulation, be it a religious myth or scientific theory, gives us a sense of mastery over our
experience. To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture
it, thus making it ones own. But with this approximation comes the realization that we have
denied the immediacy of reality and that in creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the
web of our grand illusion." Out of print.
Powell's
Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (Doubleday, 1991). -
My favorite book on scenario planning, by one of the inventors of the Global Business Network.
amazon.com softcover
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (Faber and Faber, 1996). -
"It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine... the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final."
UBS amazon.com Powell's
Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony (Viking 1979). -
"Only two centuries ago, we could explain everything about everything, out of pure reason,
and now most of that elaborate and harmonious structure has come apart before our eyes.
We are dumb..... We have discovered how to ask important questions, and now we really do
need, as an urgent matter, some answers. We now know that we cannot do this any longer
by searching our minds, for there is not enough there to search, nor can we find the truth by
guessing at it or by making up stories for ourselves. We cannot stop where we are, stuck
with today's level of understanding, nor can we go back. I do not see that we have any real
choice in this, for I can see only the one way ahead. We need science, more and better
science, not for its technology, not for leisure, not even for health and longevity, but for the
hope of wisdom which our kind of culture must acquire for its survival."
UBS amazon.com Powell's
E. O. Wilson, Consilience: Unity of Knowledge (Knopf 1998). - Wilson's argument for what he calls consilience-- that everything in our world is organized by a small number of fundamental natural laws that comprise the principles governing every branch of learning. There is a long excerpt in both the March and April 1998 issues of The Atlantic Monthly.
...let us begin by simply walking away from Foucault, and existentialist despair. Consider this rule of thumb: to the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.... Most of the issues that vex humanity daily -- ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, environmental destruction, and endemic poverty, to cite several of the most persistent -- can be solved only by integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that from the social sciences and the humanities. Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as it appears through the lens of ideology and religious dogma, or as a myopic response solely to immediate need. Yet the vast majority of our political leaders are trained primarily or exclusively in the social sciences and the humanities, and have little or no knowledge of the natural sciences. The same is true of public intellectuals, columnists, media interrogators, and think-tank gurus. The best of their analyses are careful and responsible, and sometimes correct, but the substantive base of their wisdom is fragmented and lopsided.
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J. Z. Young, Philosophy and the Brain (Oxford University
Press, 1987). -
"I must stress how little is yet known about the programs of the brain. The code
has not yet been properly broken; but we begin to see the units of it.... We can see
that the code is somehow a matter of sequences of neural activities, providing
expectancies of what to do next."
amazon.com
Powell's
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