Imagine: YOU are asked to assign a half-dozen-or-so books as required reading for ALL science majors at a college as part of their 4-year degree; NOT technical or text books, but other works, old or new, touching upon the nature of science, philosophy, thought, or methodology in a way that a practicing scientist might gain from.Okay, so my book selection:
Post your list, and forward the meme to a half-dozen-or-so other science-oriented bloggers of your choosing.
- John Gribbin, History of Western Science
- E.O. Wilson, Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species
- Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years
- V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain
- Stephen Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow
- Carl Zimmer, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life
And the blogs I'm tagging:
The Frontal Cortex
Richard Wiseman's Blog
Culture Dish
Pleiotropy
Bad Science
I hope they'll all carry on the meme-tag, because I'm very curious as to their choices!
A friend of mine attended the University of Maryland at the College Park campus. When he enrolled part of his required reading as a Freshman was "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman. Though technically a novel, it explores the nature of time and critical human reasoning in ways I, as a young man of 16, could never have imagined.
ReplyDeleteI would add that, and Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" to the essential reading list. Not only to they allow the reader to understand the manner of the 4th dimension, but also the way in which our perception can be reality.
Neat question.
ReplyDeleteNatalie Angier's Natural Obsessions (about oncogene research) would make my list.
Mark Ptashne's A Genetic Switch is supposed to be pretty good.
Maybe Sean Carroll's book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful for evolution.
Scott: I like the idea of Einstein's Dreams being required reading. Nice to see some imagination in setting reading lists!
ReplyDeleteSamurai, I haven't read any of your list. Thanks--I'll hunt them down.