Important science books to go along with a 'humanities' list of "must read" books

In no particular order.  Have fun.

*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.


*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


*John Janovy, "Yellowlegs"
One biologist's journey to follow and enter the life of of a single migrating bird, or maybe it's a journey into his own mind as a biologist



*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?

How did agriculture take over the human world so quickly? because it is unstable, always collapses, we disperse, and start it again

(this was a paper in a journal, or made into a book.  Never saw the book)


*Charles Darwin, "The Origin Of Species", 1st edition.
Darwin spent a life of exploring every nook and cranny of the living world and asked penetrating questions we are still trying to answer today


*Vernon Amadjian and Surindar Paracer?, "Symbiosis: An Introduction to Biological Associations"

Detailed examples of intimate connections between critters 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"

The 100 groups of critters on Earth 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. Stability is not the norm



*Walter Tschinkel: "The Fire Ants"
30 years of experiments and measurements to tease apart and put back together the life stories of fire ant colonies. Step into the life of an alien species! We are no match for them!  


*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



*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


*L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani, "Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation"
Wolves are the most geographically and ecologically widespread mammals besides us.  they are also more civilized. we've hated them throughout history



*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. They introduced me to the works of Harold J. Morowitz and Lynn Margulis.


Steven M. Stanley, "Earth System History"
The whole earth is similar to a self regulating organism with feedback loops between rock atmosphere and life.  It has an eventful history.  Learn how many processes and events have taken place.


*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!


or a simpler text like:
Michael A. Seeds, "Horizons: Exploring the Universe"

or

James Binney "Astrophysics: a very short introduction"


*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 the motion of atoms that make up matter


Jim Baggott, "Perfect Symmetry: The Accidental Discovery of Buckmisterfullerene"

Chemists dreamed about soccer ball shaped carbon compounds but Astronomers making actual observations found them.  How laboratory practices and personal interactions work in science.


*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.



*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.  what is matter, energy? gravity?  one experiment that describes the alien quantum world.




*Wilson: 4 colors suffice: how the map problem was solved
Math is weird: 5 color theorem takes only 9 pages to go over 5 cases, you can learn it! but 4 color theorem takes a computer to go over 1400 cases!



*rebecca stott: darwin and the barnacle
Get inside the very human world of Charles Darwin as he spends 20 years to hone his craft as a naturalist before daring to explain his world shattering theory of Evolution.



*Almost Any Freshman Biology Textbook,

*Garrett Hardin, "Biology: Its Principles and Implications" 2nd edition


I can't remember if any of Ilya Prigogne's books are well written or accessible enough to be on this list or whether I pieced together an understanding of his ideas from him and Morowitz.

I can't remember in which book I learned of Morowitz's characterization of life as a cyclic phenomenon running on energy flow.  Or his cycling theorem that states that energy flowing through a finite system induces chemical cycles.

Correct Protein Function Depends On Sequence and RATE Of Folding. Genes Code For BOTH!

New work hints at a reason why the genetic code is redundant!  Needs to code not only for sequence of aminos but also the RATE at which the sequence gets translated to get the right shape and right function.  Clever!  Explainer:

Reading genes with 4 possible bases 3 at a time can lead to 4x4x4 possible words, translated to 64 possible amino acids to build proteins. Yet biology uses only 20!  Presently most aminos are represented by 2 to 6 possible base combos.  Redundant!  or is it? 1/n

Protein function is dependent on shape.  We knew shape is dependent on amino acid sequence specified in genes.  But it's not like computer code, it's also physics, so shape is also dependent on RATE of building a protein.  Cells need to regulate THAT.  wait for it... 2/n

The redundancy in the genetic code allows for this.  For each amino, different codons that code for it can have a different tRNA molecule translate the code to amino.  Different versions of tRNA for each amino are made in varying amounts.  3/n

Needing a tRNA of low abundance will slow down the protein building process. By coding for a rare tRNA or abundant one the genes can also code for the RATE of translation (=building) of the protein and therefore its correct finally folded shape. 4/4

"A code within the genetic code: codon usage regulates co-translational protein folding"

https://biosignaling.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12964-020-00642-6

Or Should I flesh out this story? the Deep Story behind the recent hype on possible life on Venus

 
somehow we have to get across the very buzzy HUMAN DRAMA of ... so the venus announcement is that they used these impressive peices of machinery to listen to radio waves traveling through atmosphere of venus and we CAN determine that it's diff shaped molecules DANCING!

and..the HISTORY we gotta get across that science is a LOONG HAUL story, not the latest fashion buzz, not the quick salvation from aliens.  it took 150 years of really hard work, confusing work, to understand that stuff is made of dancing molecules, hell, Boltzman died for it

so the sense of mastery, the precision craftwork it takes to work with these radio detectors and have CONFIDENCE we've detected a particular molecule dancing in the atmosphere of what looks like a DOT in the sky!

we have to keep talking about how science is this grand slow collective endeavour of 1000s of people carefully taking apart and putting together an understanding of results from many different realms to get them to fit together into a stronger and more wideranging world view

our job is to explore the philosophical implications of the question "what is life".  We don't know what life is! we don't know how life fits in with the rest of physics and chemistry!  is it totally alien?  is it a phenomenon on a continuum of complexity possible? etc...

we have to portray how amazing it would be  if we even ONLY found, say, something like the reverse krebs cycle happening on venus and nothing else.  putting life in the continuum of levels of complexity of chems instead of it being a miracle invented by alien space dude, god.

Writing Chemistry Poetry is hard! should I keep trying?

from whence new locks of flaxen hair?
how do deep gashes heal?
Are there weavers in her scalp?
factories made of steel?

i marvel that a crawling babe
from its mother's womb can come
grown only by the food she eats
how is this transformation done?

we've looked within by microscope
and still it's mystery
till by centuries of dirty labor
we learned whats chemistry

we watched microscopic urchin egg
split to two then four then eight...
till more and more form embryo
the cells move 'round and differentiate

it is the way with all living beings
from cells do other cells become
and we've found single cells in ponds
behave like miniature animals

what are these living sacklike beings?
more cells inside em ad finitum?
no! we discovered molecules
that run round and round and exite em.

two hundred years of fruitful confusion
in laboratories of fire and glass
we learned to weigh the very air
completing accounts for chem reactions

lucretius imagined molecules
that made everything we know
it took till 1922
that by measuring we could show

jiggling in the palm of your hand
the number of atoms boggles the mind
six hundred thousand billion billion
of 92 different kinds

each living amoeba single cell
contains a swirling multitude
of molecules who's number exceeds
all the bricks in new york city

these molecules are more than bricks
they jiggle and swirl all around
sensing each other upon collision
making decisions of what to do

springloaded mechanisms guided by equations
join each to each or disband
building structures quite complex
and dynamic patterns profound

thru networks of these logical decisions
protein molecules in your cells
engage in elaborate computations
coordinate behavior of a complex being

....
a poem on molecules?

Molecular Zine I wrote on a folded piece of paper once

 Sometimes the world seems so solid.  but then it rains on a cold spring morning and you go out for a jog anyway and you notice your breath exhale as mist and you wonder am I water too?

and you wonder so hard you do some chemistry and find your breath does condense into water on a cold window pane and further.. if you breath into a solution of slaked lime your breath can precipitate out as limestone... some of your breath can turn into rock?

and the plants, the tall firm trunks of wood, all made of breath, can be burnt back into breath like you can when you are finnished.  

and if you wonder so hard at such transformations that you math the hell out of them like Einstein and Perrin did and decide that breath is a billion billion molecules who's collisions can be cleverly counted

and you patiently count and count and yes... 623,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them in the palm of your hand and you look deeper and deeper and you watch yourself when you were an

egg

in your mother's womb and watch that tiny amoeba suckle at her womb and grow so lush it splits into two amoebas and then 4 and 8 and 16 and 32 and 64 and 128 and 256 and 512 and 1024 and 2048 and everyday it's

growing, 4096... 262164...524188... 1048576... 2 million, 4 million amoebas bustling and hustling and building and learning to dance eyeballs and heartbeat and muscles and lungs

and 268435456... 536870912 and a billion and 2 billion and 4 billion and a vast nation of amoebas connecting and conversing and inventing and talking up a whole brainful of thoughts and desires to look inside themselves asking what is this amoeba

life?  with its hustling and bustling of 623,000,000,000,000,000 molecules each amoeba is and how does it live?  more molecular robots than there are bricks in all of New York City

in motion and jiggling and wiggling and dancing with each other,  calculating... and calculations come together to make comparisons, and counting and differentiating and deciding and sifting and sorting through

random jiggling quantum fluctuations of the universe to create nano transformer robots a society of them a clever squaredance of one hundred different dances with a

thousand robot dancers in each one and they all swirl together so that out of the crowd of jostling robots they can recreate any dance and spilling this tale out from scratch with pen and paper surely

got hopelessly lost in a bustling confederation of a trillion squaredances of a hundred thousand billion dancers each and it takes more than 12 small pages to comprehend life.