Some Trade Winds That Are Blowing
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth.Bertrand Russell
PERIODICALS
New Scientist No better way to confront the many headed hydra of science, and to then, like the victims of Count Dracula, allow yourself to be deliciously bitten by one of them. In return, the exquisitely rich life is offered you. The book reviews are particularly good pointers.Its The Big Questions –Reality, Existence, God, Consciousness, Life, Time, Self, Sleep, Death is a very good introduction to, and compilation of, the thoughts that abound in the science world on these topics, if you wanted a quick crash course to see what is happening.
The Edge Each year has a series of essays on the posed question. Of unequal and varying quality, but intellectually challenging and stimulating. Pick from Appendix 1 the question posed in any one year, and see what is then speculated by a wide selection of authors.
Wikipedia Just wonderful. Do not be afraid to donate when it outs out its call for funds. Regular donations even better! Not perfect [what is?] and disdained by the elite, and sometime correctly so, but more usually unfairly. A great way to start.
Ted Talks Many of those who have written books set out below have also graced us with a Ted Talk or 2, so worth checking them out [among the many enlightening Ted Talks]
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MOVING PICTURES
If you have to pick one, then
The Day the Universe Changed [TV ] James Burke, which is also a book. Alas, very hard to find either.
Creation [Film] Darwin's writing Origin of the Species, and how fear of the consequences held him back from articulating his views. Oh that there never again is such a climate of fear or dark ages.
Life of Brian [Film] Monty Python
The Dead [Film] John Houston’s 1987 beautifully evocative film adaptation of the James Joyce short story.
The Human Universe [TV] Brian Cox and BBC
The Lost Tribes of Humanity [TV] Alice Roberts and BBC
Star Trek [TV] The original TV series only. A multi-racial/multi-species crew of the Starship Enterprise that was an exploratory ship and not a battleship.
Boston Legal [TV] Series 3 Episode 5, 14 and 16 in particular, but most episodes in all series pretty good.
South Park [TV not any of the films]] Too many good ones to pick, so try the lot! Kenny does not stay dead forever.
Don't panic about the Population [TV] Professor Hans Rosling,
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AUDIO
Colonel Grossman Killology:
ABC Radio National Background Briefing 02/05/99
Also a book. See below.
Reith Lectures All - Not just, but especially, the 2003 series
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BOOKS - PRINT and EBOOKS
Author Title
Jennifer Ackerman The Genius of Birds
Anil Ananthaswamy The Man who wasn’t there
Karen Armstrong History of God
Anthony Atkinson Inequality
A J Ayer Language, Truth and Logic
Juklian Baggini How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy
Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex
Ernest Becker The Denial of Death
Peter Bellwood The First Migrants: Ancient Migrations
Christopher Boehme Moral Origins
Nick Bostrom Superintelligence
James Burke The Day the Universe Changed
Dean Burnett The Idiot Brain[A very close second to Patricia Churchland, if not an actual tie].
David Christian Origin Story: A Big History of Everything
Patricia S Churchland Touching a Nerve. [If you can only read one book on the possibilities of the brain, then read this one].
George Church &
Ed Regis Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology with Reinvent Nature and Ourselves
Lewis Dartnell Origins: How the Earth Made Us
Charles Darwin Origin of the Species
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Descent of Man
Richard Dawkins The Ancestor’s Tale
The Magic of Reality
The Greatest Show on Earth
Ruth Defries: The Big Ratchet: How humanity thrives in the face of Natural Crisis
Jarad Diamond The Third Chimpanze
Guns Germs and Steel
Natural Experiments in History
The World until Yesterday
Jennifer Doudna &
Samual Sternberg: A Crack in Creation:The New Power to Control Evolution
K. Eric Drexler Engines of Creation
Ben Dupre 50 Philosophy Ideas you really need to know
Einhard: The Life of Charlemagne
John H. Evans: What is a Human? What the answers mean for human rights?
Timothy Ferris The Science of Liberty
Jostein Gaarder Sophie’s World
Hector A Garcia Apha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression
Lloyd Geering From the Big Bang to God
Susan Greenfield The Private Life of the Brain
A C Grayling The God Argument
The Good Book an Atheist’s Bible
Mary & John Gribbin Being Human
John Gribbin &
Jeremy Cherfas The First Chimpanzee
Dave Grossman On Killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society
Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Homo Deus: The History of Tomorrow [How prescient only time will tell. But he may be on the money]
Sam Harris Free Will
Ernst Heckel The Riddle of the Universe at the close of the 19th Century
Piet Hein Grooks- there are 4 Books. [If you do not know of them, do yourself a favour]
Joseph Heller- Catch 22 [a terrific read. This is one of your thoughtful relaxation read]
Adam Hochschild Bury the Chains
Bruce Hood The Self Illusion: Why there is no ‘you’ inside your head
The Domesticated Brain
Alexander Von Humboldt Cosmos Vol 1
Nicholas Humphrey The Mind made flesh
A History of the Mind
Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness
Aldous Huxley The Perennial Philosophy
Clive James Cultural Amnesia
Stephen Jones Almost like a Whale [an update that applies modern scientific knowledge to show the originality, and flaws, of Darwin's Origin of the Species and how really it has stood the tests of time, peer review, exhaustive investigation and scepticism to rightfully be one of the great contributions to understanding the world]
Marjorie Kelley The Divine Right of Capital
Naomi Klein No Logo
John Konner The Atheist’s Bible
Davi Kopenawa &
Bruce Albert The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami shaman
Kevin N. Laland: Darwin's Unfinished Symphony: How Culture made the Human Mind
A book whose ideas are truly astounding.
Nicholas Lane Life Ascending: the 10 Great Tricks of Evolution.
The Vital Question
Robert Laughlin A Different Universe: Reinventing Psychics from the Bottom Down
Jonah Lehrer The Decisive Moment: How the Brain makes up its mind
Jeremy Lent: The Patterning Instinct: A cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
Marc Lewis Memoirs of an addicted brain
Roy Lewis The Evolution Man, Or, How I Ate My Father [recently released]
Lucretius De Rerum Natura [who else puts a scientific treatise into a poem?]
Ian McFadyen Mind Wars
Gary Marcus Kluge
Somerset Maugham Anything by him- even less marginally relevant than Boston Legal, but a doyen of story-tellers: short stories, novels and plays. This is your ‘just enjoy’ relaxation.
Jean Meisler On an Exposition of Errors and of Abuses of the Behavior and of the Government of Men, where We See clear and Evident Demonstrations of the Vanity and Falsity of All the Gods and of All the Religions of the World in Order to Be Addressed to His Parishioners After His Death and in Order to Serve As Witness of Truth to Them, and to All Like Them. In His Testimony to the People.
Craig Nelson Thomas Paine: His Life, his time, and the birth of modern nations
Osho The Book of Understanding
Thomas Paine Common Sense
The Rights of Man
Stephen Pinker How the Mind Works
The Language Instinct
The Better Angels of our nature
Donald Prothero Evolution: What the Fossils say and why it matters
Vilayanur Ramachandran 2003 Reith Lectures: The Emerging Mind
Matt Ridley The Rational Optimist
Bertrand Russell History of Western Philosophy
Carl Safina Beyond Words: What Animals think and feel
Carl Sagan The Demon Haunted World
Sally Satel &
Scoot O. Lilienfield Brainwashed: the seductive appeal of mindless Neuroscience
Edwin Schrodinger What is life
Michael Shermer The Moral Arc: How Science makes us better people
Daniel Smail Deep History of the Brain
Mitchell Stephens Imagine there is no Heaven: How atheism helped create the Modern World
Thomas Suddendorf The Gap: The science that separates us from other animals
Daniel Tammett Embracing the Wide Sky
Paul Thagar Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science
The Brain and the Meaning of life
Theophrastus The Characters of Theophrastus
James Thrower The Alternative Tradition
Giulio Tononi Phi: A Voyage from Brain to Soul [How to weave a wonderful story and science]
Frans de Waal The Bonobo and the Atheist: In search of Humanism among the Primates.
Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?
Peter Watson Ideas [Now that’s how you write history!]
The Modern Mind
Richard Watson Digital vs Human
H G Wells The Outline of History
Tim Whitebread Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
Richard Wilkinson &
Kate Pickett The Spirit Level: Why Equality is better for everyone
Edward O Wilson Consilience
The Future of Life
The Social Conquest of Earth [the alternative book to Churchland’s if you can only read one]
The Meaning of human existence
Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Virginia Woolf A Room of one’s own
Mrs Dalloway
David Wootton The Invention of science
Richard Wrangham The Goodness Paradox
Andrea Wulf The Invention of Nature – the adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt: The Lost Hero of Science [How can Alexander have been so forgotten]