I like reading about the universe, big bang, phycics but im only enthusiastic im not trained or over intelligent.

Stuff like a brief history of everything by bill bryson.

Quite like philosophy too.

Anyone?

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.

Freakonomics (although it’s economics, but I’m guessing it’s the kind of book you’re looking for)

The Greatest Show on Earth – Dawkins

Science but not physics

river out of eden or blind watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (groundbreaking at the time)
What if by Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd)

This is a fantastic book about bang up to date physics:

If you’re interested in Neurology, I love V.S. Ramachandran – Phantoms in the Brain. If you’re interested in Medicine, I love Atul Gawande’s books, particularly Better.

‘Survivors’ by Richard Fortey: about some of the animals and plants that remain largely unchanged after multi-million years of geological time. It’s written for the non-specialist.

Philosophy’s a tough one, I can’t think of many pop-philosophy books that actually bear any relationship to the academic subject*. I remember enjoying The Consolations of Philosophy – if you’re interested ina thought provoking collection of essays Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life is good. If you’re interested in some formal logic then I like Logic by Paul Tomassi but that’s a textbook really.

The Kuhn book about the Copernican Revolution’s well worth a read and bridges philosophy and science.

*It’s what my degree is in.

Not all physics or even natural sciences, but these are all really good.

Elephants on acid

Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (this one takes a bit of getting into but is really worth reading, makes you think about world events from a completely different angle, and no it doesn’t involve lesbian ballerinas).

The Economic Naturalist by Robert Frank

Molecules at an Exhibition. I can’t remember who wrote it, but I will check as I have a copy downstairs.

+1 for What If. It’s awesome.

For physics, Richard Feynman’s books are interesting. “Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman” is a nice collection of stories from his life. If you want to learn more science, “Six Easy Pieces” is a nice start.

In Search of Shrodingers cat by John Gribbin. A classic on Quantum Mechanics

“The Particle at the End of the Universe” which is about the Higgs Boson

Not quite the same thing but “Surely Your Joking Mr Fynman” by Richard Fynman is an amazing book about his life. Genuinely funny and readable

Couple of biology ones I enjoyed recently: Olivia Judsons “Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice for all Creation” and “zero degrees of empathy by Simon Baron Cohen. The first is a serious book on the evolution on mating systems. The second is a really deep book on the neuroscience of autism and other developmental psychopathologies. Oh, another great read – “my Beautiful Genome” – a wonderful account of a women’s investigation of her own genome. Totally engaging.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is meant to be a decent read

if you like approachable books on the greatest stories in the world of maths, then I highly recommend anything by marcus du sautoy, simon singh, alex bellos

Bad thoughts by Jamie whyte is also a great book on fallacy and logic in argument and thinking. A really good guide to the philosophy of proper reason.

I wasn’t that impressed by Bad Science, but I was was distracted by toothache when I read it, so maybe I should give it another chance.

Re Philosophy, it’s an old book, and won’t cover anything after about 1950ish, but you could do a lot worse than “A History of Western Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell. Maybe not one to read end-to-end, but I’ve always liked dipping into it. Academic, but very readable IMO. I imagine there will be some .pdfs floating around online if you wanted to have a look.

The disappearing spoon by Sam Kean is good. Basically a history of the periodic table – nice style that brings out the personalities and times surrounding various element discoveries.

Might I suggest “Riding Rockets” by Mike Mullane? Biog about his time on the Shuttle programme, truly fascinating.

Black Holes and Time Warps, by Kip Thorne.

Most Secret War by R V Jones…..about the evolving science in WW2, beams etc. I read it twice straight away and I don’t do a great deal of reading on science. Fantastic book.

e=mc2 by David Bodanis, found it a really accessible and entertaining read.

Longitude, by Dava Sobel – almost more science history, it’s the story “of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time”, but again it’s really well told.

+1 on Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman – a generally good read with physics and philosophy mixed in.

Longitude, by Dava Sobel – almost more science history, it’s the story “of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time”, but again it’s really well told.

Indeed.
Then you need to go to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich,and look at
Harrison’s watches 😉

Quotes have gone mad

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is meant to be a decent read

Essential reading IMHO

Most Secret War by R V Jones

Good call I’ve also read it twice

“The Invisible Gorilla” is an amazing book on the human mind

Longitude is also great again I think I’ve read it twice

“The man who new to much” The Life of Robert Hooke is almost over whelming for how much one man can do in a Life time. Laying out London after the great fire, describing the red spot on Jupiter, Finding out why we breath, designing buildings. Building of microscopes. the first person to use th eword cell in Biology. Oh and his diary noted every orgasm

“The Rocket Boys”

Kids in America building rockets in the 1950s. Am amazing story of love and death

I give up, why do they do this to me

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is meant to be a decent read
Essential reading IMHO

+1

The Big Physics Questions by Michael Brooks is, believe it or not, a real page turner. Very interesting and very digestible.

Shadows of the Mind by Roger Penrose… an argument against strong AI but also a bit of a grand tour through maths, logic, particle physics.
Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, an argument FOR strong AI and much more besides, a life changing book.

Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik. Enjoyable reading on materials science and its importance to our modern lifestyle.

Covered a little bit of Feynman in the course I’m currently studying (There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom) and would definitely read more of his work.

Question for the Dawkins fans – is he quite so evangelical in his written work as he is in his public persona or is it more focussed on actual science as opposed to a dig at religion? It’s the one thing that has really put me off reading him so far (nothing against atheism, I just can’t stand zealots of any flavour).

The Science of Discworld series are a good read, sort of science explained for non scientists if that makes sense.

Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik. Enjoyable reading on materials science and its importance to our modern lifestyle.

If you like that try reading;

Structures: Or why things don’t fall down

The New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don’t Fall through the Floor

They were both required reading before starting 1st year undergrad engineering at Cambridge. 10 years since I read them and I still use anecdotes/thought experiments from those books to figure stuff out!

In fact, so ave having to think through it, http://www3.eng.cam.ac.uk/admissions/information/reading.html (Petroski is a very good author, start with some of his).

I love this one: Impossibility: The Limits of Science and The Science of Limits

Quite a lot of it is about cosmology but some other stuff covered too. Tells us a lot about what we can know (but don’t), and what we can never know.

Some of the author’s other books will probably suit you too – he’s basically a cosmologist. He assumes you don’t have much background, but not that you’re an idiot.

Question for the Dawkins fans – is he quite so evangelical in his written work as he is in his public persona or is it more focussed on actual science as opposed to a dig at religion?

I gave up on the God Delusion about 2/3rds of the way through because despite agreeing with what he was saying, I couldn’t stand how he was saying it.

Question for the Dawkins fans – is he quite so evangelical in his written work as he is in his public persona or is it more focussed on actual science as opposed to a dig at religion? It’s the one thing that has really put me off reading him so far (nothing against atheism, I just can’t stand zealots of any flavour).

Depends. The God Delusion is very much an anti-religious tract, I can see why peterfile gave up on it. The one I mentioned (The Greatest Show on Earth) has a brief bit of anti-religion in an early chapter, but once he’s got it out of his system the rest of the book is a fascinating look at evolution.

If you want to rediscover a more human side of Dawkins, then look on youtube for “love letters to Richard Dawkins”. Not providing a link, because they are definitely NSFW.

On the topic of Philosophy, if you haven’t already read it, try ‘Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. It’s a brilliant read. The sequel, Lila, is a lot tougher… I’ve been supposedly reading it for the last 15 years.

+1 In Search Of Shrodinger’s Cat

From Eternity to Here by Sean Caroll was a good read

The Quantum Universe by Brian Cox was also good

But the best one if read for a while is “What If?” by Randall Munroe (the bloke who does xkcd) It takes absurd questions – “What would happen if the earth stopped spinning?” and then tries to apply actual science to the answers

“What If” is always good for a laugh.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/

There’s a book too.

THE KNOWLEDGE – How to rebuild our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell

Went to see talk by the author last night – bought the book.

13 best science books for the general reader

Philosophical Letters (1733) Voltaire
The Origin of Species (1859) Charles Darwin
On a Piece of Chalk (1868) Thomas Huxley
The Mysterious Universe (1930) James Jeans
The Birth and Death of the Sun (1940) George Gamow
The Character of Physical Law (1965) Richard Feynman
The Elegant Universe (1999) Brian Greene
The Selfish Gene (1976) Richard Dawkins
The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986) Richard Rhodes
The Inflationary Universe (1997) Alan Guth
The Whole Shebang (1997) Timothy Ferris
Hiding in the Mirror (2005) Lawrence Krauss
Warped Passages (2005) Lisa Randall

Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman is excellent as are his 6 easy pieces and 6 not so easy pieces and his lecture on QED.

His biography – Genius by James Gleik is excellent as well.