COMPLEXITY
*Gregory Bateson, "Mind and Nature"
what
processes does a mechanical system need to have to act like a mind? to
evolve? are they the same? concrete vocabulary to ask and answer.
*M. Mitchel Waldrop, "Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos"
how
do the behaviors of economies, ecosystems, and living organisms come
from interactions between their parts? narratives of this new field
*Alberts et. el. "Molecular Biology of the Cell"
You
are a confederation of a TRILLION living amoeba, each amoeba is a dance
of more nanotransformer robots than there are bricks in all of NYC
*Charles A. Sorrel and George F. Sandstrom, "Minerals of the World"
how
does the chemistry of merely 2 dozen elements create the 1000s of
wildly different minerals? this is one book i learned chemistry from
*Kernighan and Plauger, "Software Tools in Pascal"
how
to break down the solution to a complex problem into a toolbag of
simple generically usefull tools that you can then use for the next
problem
*Robert M. Hazen, "genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin"
can
life have formed only from chemicals? finally chemists are looking
outside of their water filled testtubes for the chemistry at the origins
of life.
*Douglas Hofstadter, "Goedel, Escher, Bach",
can
a system complex enough to understand itself be too complex to
understand? Goedel's math proof says, YES! a playful romp explaning
that
*Barry Goldman, "Complexity Lab Manual (in progress)"
can
we understand the origins of this rich fragrant creative living world
from first principles of heat flow, chemistry and mathematics?
where
does the complexity and creativity life come from? a michaelangelo
like creator or from the chemistry of mud? 100 lab experiments
*greenwood and earnshaw: chemistry of the elements
these
are the players: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus,
sulfur, silicon, aluminum, iron... and oh boy, the game that they play
*Morrison and Boyd: Organic chemistry
chemistry
is not simply colored fluids in beakers... but molecules, each
responsive to temperature, pH, solvent, each other. and the responses...
*Dennis Bray: wetware: a computer in every cell
we
are a conversation of a trillion living amoeba. each is a massively
parallel computating device that makes your computer look like a toy
WHAT IS HUMAN EXPERIENCE
*Julian Jaynes, "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
were
the characters in Homer's Illiad conscious? what are kings graves gods
and hallucinations? why do humans organize around leaders?
*James Howard Kunstler, "Geography of Nowhere"
insights
in psychological reaction to lived spaces and history and analysis of
how we have created the american automobile clusterfuck
*Vicki Hearne, "Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name"
Can
dogs and horses learn to become responsible citizens? yes. do they
enjoy excelling at these tasks? yes. good advice on raising kids too.
*John Janovy, "Yellowlegs"
one
biologist's journey to follow and enter the life of of a single wild
bird, or maybe it's a journey into his own mind as a biologist
*Kaufmann, Walter, "Critique of Religion and Philosophy"
wild
journey through philosophy, religion and poetry, "what was once poetry
when done spontenaously, becomes religion when routine". also a trip to
hell
*Bill Moyers, "A World of Ideas"
amazing
insights about human civil and poetic life in interviews with dozens of
public figures. should be standard highschool text book.
*David Rindos, "Symbiosis and instability in Agriculture"
we
were nomadic hunter gatherers for 100,000s of years and then in a
flash, agriculture took us by surprise and spread like wildfire, how?
*Erick Hawkins, "The Body is a Clear Space"
to
Hawkins, dance is not the placements of joints in various positions
like marionett puppets, but shared feeling of existence. collected
essays.
*"Baghavad Gita"
life
eats life to live. biology's messier than that. then humans evolve to
get cought up on petty egos. the HORRIFIC reality and a way back.
*Sidney Mintz, "Sweetness and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern History"
only read a taste of this. something about women healers, the church and slavery for sure...
*Jonathan Sacks, "The Dignity of Difference"
christian,
islamic, brittish, american... vision for humanity is the soul crushing
world swallowing monolith, but there is a another way...
*Joseph Campbell, and Bill Moyers, "the Power of Myth"
life
eats life to live. on every level. our clinging egos are latecomers to
the scene and have been reacting in creative horror ever since
*Mary Daly, "Gyn/Ecology: the Metaethics of Radical Feminism"
wild poetic real trip from mother Earth to Athena, to witch burnings, to Nazis to Medical industry to the mother....
*Annie Dillard, "The Writing Life"
writing is brutal. this is a beautiful book
*Mary Catherine Bateson, "In a Daughters Eye: A memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson"
growing up with two fascinating anthropologist/biologist parents
*M. Scott Peck, "The Road Less Traveled"
the art of learning to listen to another, is very hard. is necessary
TORAH
*Richard Eliot Friedman, "Torah and commentary",
old
testament is an interlocking poetry puzzle that each generation must
solve for themselves. hebrew text, translation and commentary shows how
*Robert Alter, "The Art of Biblical Narrative"
essays describing the mechanics portrayed in Friedman's book
*Bloom and Rosenberg, "the Book of J"
was the core of the old testement a finely crafted ironic critique of religion written by a woman writing in solomon's court?
BIOLOGY
*Vernon Amadjian and Surindar Paracer?, "Symbiosis: An Introduction to Biological Associations"
lush
detailed examples of range of biological associations from deadly
parasitic to mutually beneficial symbioses. do organisms have
boundaries?
all the different stories of creatures living inside each other
worms that travel between snail and raccoon, fungi that
*Lynn Margulis and Karlene Schwartz, "Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth"
100
phyla of critters out there that are more different from each other
than plants are from animals, by lifecycle and molecular mechanics
*E. C. Pielou, "After the Ice Age: the return of life to glaciated north america"
lush
details of how our landscape and ecosystem grew back together as the
Glaciers retreated over 10,000 years. today's stability is not the norm
*Mark Winston, "Biology of the Honeybee"
learn
the intimate life of a space alien, the over 270 different skills they
have. how they create a complex superorganism without no leaders
*Borror and White, "Peterson's Field Guide to Insects",
there
may be a dozen kinds of mammals lurking 'round your back yard, but you
can find at least 500 kinds of insects living there.
*Jack Harlan, "Crops and Man"
the complex ecology and evolution of weeds, humans and crops. how it all got started in multiple places in multiple ways.
*Holling Clancy Holling, "Pagoo"
follow
the story of a young hermit crab growing up in the sea. jam packed with
lush illustrations of all kinds of sea critters and biology
*John C. Kricher and Gordon Morrison, "Field Guide to Eastern Forests",
go
out and see how your landscape is knit together by the myriad
creatures, get to know some of them. great details of ecological
processes
*"Golden Guide to Pond Life",
stick
it in your back pocket and get to know what's happening at a pond near
you. from microscopic anamalcules to turtles and raccoons
*Buchsbaum, "Animals Without Backbones"
detailed biology of ALL the squishy critters. fun.
detailed biology of amoeba, jellyfish, parasitic worms, starfish, lobsters, octopi,
*George W. Barlow, "The Cichlid Fishes: Nature's Grand Experiment in Evolution"
A
lake in africa where a 1000 species of fish evolved quickly. they
explore every niche, have elaborate mating rituals, raise their young...
*L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani, "Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation"
wolves
r the most geographically and ecologically widespread mammals besides
us. they are also more civilized. we've hated them throughout history
*Donald Kroodsma, "The Singing Life of Birds"
only
50 years ago we start LISTENING to birds. they are singing elaborate
creative patterns with rules. we don't yet know what they are saying
*Menno Schilthuizen, "Frogs, Flies, and Dandelions: Speciation -- the evolution of new species"
it's
not just astroturf, humans and hotdogs out there. a 1000 creative
species out your window. how does it happen? here are some fun
examples
*David Arora, "Mushrooms Demystified"
it
was fungi, taught the green plants to live on dry land, and fungi
learned to digest their wooden skeletons. (and everything else) a field
guide, learn them!
*William Morton Wheeler, "The Fungus Growing Ants of North America"
how
one ant sized mother eventually raises up a city of a million children
the size of your living room. in south america, they are in charge.
*Paul Colinvaux, "Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare",
2 dozen tales of how our world is knit together at the biological and chemical scale
*Lewis Thomas, "The Lives of a Cell",
these little biology essays got me started in highschool on lifelong expeditions of the biological world.
*Paul Colinvaux, "Ecology"
textbook. the beef. all the parts. plants animal mineral. how they weave together.
*Michael Procter, Peter Yeo and Andrew Lack, "The Natural History of Pollination"
the
elaborate mating dances between flowers bees and wasps. yes, wasps and
orchids are having sex with each other! humans aint so weird.
SCIENCE
*Frank Shu, "The Physical Universe: an Introduction to Astronomy"
read
about, do the physics of the grand drama between gravity and the 2nd
law of thermodynamics which creates all the structures of our universe
calculate
how much energy the pulsar looses to glow of the crab nebula, then how
far back in time it began in an explosion. yes one was recorded there
1000 years ago!
*John Janovy, "On Becoming a Biologist"
biology
is a unique science half way between chemistry and geology, @ the human
scale, ready to teach us if we listen to the critters.
*Gerald Holton and Stephen Brush, "Introduction to the Concepts and Theories in Phyiscs"
why
trust science? each theory takes a 100 years of exacting observation,
brutally honest constructive criticism, back and forth before being
woven into a stable edifice
learn
how hard, how long, with what back and forth confusion to wrest basic
facts of science: heat is energy of motion of atoms that make up matter
*Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh, "The Mathematical Experience"
history
and exercizes of the mathematician's art. details. what IS mathematics?
whimsical creation of the human mind or bedrock of reality?
*Guy Alexander, "Silica and Me"
thin.
easy read. how does a scientist make sense of puzzling experiments?
beautiful details. learn some chemistry. geology is silica. read it.
*"Statistics the Easy Way"
statistics
is some subtle complex shit. properties of distributions of multiple
samples of distributions... first book that helped me understand
if
you take a 100 different random samples of a bag of 40 red and 60 blue
marbles, how does the average # of red in all samples relate to 40/100?
how
many random samples of 30 people in a city does it take so that the
total average of the average height of each sample is close to the
average height in the whole city? statistics is subtle complex shit.
this book taught me.
n
different random samples of people in a city, each of size m. what must n
and m be so that the total average of the average height of each sample
is close to the average height in the whole city? statistics is subtle
complex shit. this book taught me.
*Duncan C. Blanchard, "From Raindrops to Volcanoes"
a
delightful romp through observation and experiment. how to collect
microscopic water drops in sea spray? have a baby spider build you a
net...
one scientists
experimental journey to understand rain. how to collect microscopic
water drops in sea spray? have a baby spider build you a net...
*Richard Feynman, "The Meaning of it All",
*Richard Feynman, "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out",
science
as a way of life of exploration, being able to live without certainty,
striving for brutal honesty, is it valuble for human society?
*Richard feynman: six easy pieces
master
physicist introduces you to his craft. whats the most profound
sentence of science knowlege? what is energy? gravity? whats batshit
insane about the quantum world?
*Wilson: 4 colors suffice: how the map problem was solved
math
is weird: 5 color theorm takes only 9 pages to go over 5 cases, you can
do it! but 4 color theorem takes a computer to go over 1400 cases!
*Einstein and Infeld: the evolution of physics
from the masters. first time i understood what soundwaves were, how light works
*rebecca stott: darwin and the barnacle
get
inside the very human world of Charles Darwin as he spends 20 years to
hone his craft before daring to explain his world shattering theory
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