Be a student of the best science teachers.
There is no shortage of books that promise to teach data science. Most of these books read like college textbooks with a wealth of technical material prefaced by a short conceptual introduction…
Science! In many ways, we live in a thrilling era of scientific discovery. Some scientists are making breakthroughs in gene-editing and recycling orbital rockets. Others are perilously close to discovering life on other planets. Others have created…
From groundbreaking metaphysics to the neurological impact of psychedelic drugs to existence of aliens, this list has plenty to teach.
A Brief History of Time will be great for you if you're after an introduction to all the fundamentals of hard science and cosmology, and you're determined enough (slash clever enough) to persist through some rather dry writing.
Best science books for an early introduction to science. What do kids learn in early elementary science? Well, a lot of what is covered in elementary school science involves the water cycle, the butterfly life cycle, matter, forces, energy, the weather, what is science, and what scientists do. These picture books make fantastic additions to your science class, whether you're a teacher or a homeschool parent. Discover fantastic picture books for your science bookshelf.
From groundbreaking metaphysics to the neurological impact of psychedelic drugs to existence of aliens, this list has plenty to teach.
From Oliver Sacks to graphic novels, Maria Popova and Deborah Blum discuss their favorite science books of the year.
This list of popular science books is breathtaking and inspirational -- so give yourself a gift of one or more of these books today
I’ve chosen 17 of the best science books for nonfiction fans that are some of the best reads of all time. Hope you enjoy!
San Francisco Chronicle bestseller - BOOKRIOT Best Books of the Year - Next Big Idea Book Club Best Science Books of the Year "I love the book, and everyone should read it." - Ryan Holiday "Undeniably entertaining." - The New York Times This funny, "extraordinary and thought-provoking" (The Wall Street Journal) book asks whether we are in fact the superior species. As it turns out, the truth is stranger--and far more interesting--than we have been led to believe. If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal overturns everything we thought we knew about human intelligence, and asks the question: would humans be better off as narwhals? Or some other, less brainy species? There's a good argument to be made that humans might be a less successful animal species precisely because of our amazing, complex intelligence. All our unique gifts like language, math, and science do not make us happier or more "successful" (evolutionarily speaking) than other species. Our intelligence allowed us to split the atom, but we've harnessed that knowledge to make machines of war. We are uniquely susceptible to bullshit (though, cuttlefish may be the best liars in the animal kingdom); our bizarre obsession with lawns has contributed to the growing threat of climate change; we are sexually diverse like many species yet stand apart as homophobic; and discriminate among our own as if its natural, which it certainly is not. Is our intelligence more of a curse than a gift? As scientist Justin Gregg persuasively argues, there's an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn't more prevalent in the animal kingdom. Simply put, non-human animals don't need it to be successful. And, miraculously, their success arrives without the added baggage of destroying themselves and the planet in the process. In seven mind-bending and hilarious chapters, Gregg highlights one feature seemingly unique to humans--our use of language, our rationality, our moral systems, our so-called sophisticated consciousness--and compares it to our animal brethren. Along the way, remarkable tales of animal smarts emerge, as you'll discover: "A dazzling, delightful read on what animal cognition can teach us about our own mental shortcomings." - Adam Grant The house cat who's better at picking winning stocks than actual fund managers Elephants who love to drink Pigeons who are better than radiologists at spotting cancerous tissue Bumblebees who are geniuses at teaching each other soccer What emerges is both demystifying and remarkable, and will change how you look at animals, humans, and the meaning of life itself. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780316388061 Media Type: Hardcover Publisher: Little Brown and Company Publication Date: 08-09-2022 Pages: 320 Product Dimensions: 8.90h x 5.80w x 1.30dAbout the Author Justin Gregg is a Senior Research Associate with the Dolphin Communication Project and an Adjunct Professor at St. Francis Xavier University where he lectures on animal behavior and cognition. Originally from Vermont, Justin studied the echolocation abilities of wild dolphins in Japan and The Bahamas. He currently lives in rural Nova Scotia where he writes about science and contemplates the inner lives of the crows that live near his home.
From groundbreaking metaphysics to the neurological impact of psychedelic drugs to existence of aliens, this list has plenty to teach.
The best science books to take on holiday, as recommended by theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of 2021--Bloomberg Businessweek; A Best Science Book of 2021--The Guardian; A Best Science Book of 2021--Financial Times; A Best Philosophy Book of 2021--Five Books; A Best Book of 2021--The Economist Anil Seth's quest to understand the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the most exciting contributions to twenty-first-century science. What does it mean to "be you"--that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood. Now, internationally renowned neuroscience professor, researcher, and author Anil Seth is offers a window into our consciousness in BEING YOU: A New Science of Consciousness. Anil Seth is both a leading expert on the neuroscience of consciousness and one of most prominent spokespeople for this relatively new field of science. His radical argument is that we do not perceive the world as it objectively is, but rather that we are prediction machines, constantly inventing our world and correcting our mistakes by the microsecond, and that we can now observe the biological mechanisms in the brain that accomplish this process of consciousness. Seth has been interviewed for documentaries aired on the BBC, Netflix, and Amazon and podcasts by Sam Harris, Russell Brand, and Chris Anderson, and his 2017 TED Talk on the topic has been viewed over 11 million times, a testament to his uncanny ability to make unimaginably complex science accessible and entertaining. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781524742874 Media Type: Hardcover Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group Publication Date: 10-19-2021 Pages: 352 Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)About the Author Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt 1 The Real Problem What is consciousness? For a conscious creature, there is something that it is like to be that creature. There is something it is like to be me, something it is like to be you, and probably something it is like to be a sheep, or a dolphin. For each of these creatures, subjective experiences are happening. It feels like something to be me. But there is almost certainly nothing it is like to be a bacterium, a blade of grass, or a toy robot. For these things, there is (presumably) never any subjective experience going on: no inner universe, no awareness, no consciousness. This way of putting things is most closely associated with the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who in 1974 published a now legendary article called "What is it like to be a bat?" in which he argued that while we humans could never experience the experiences of a bat, there nonetheless would be something it is like for the bat, to be a bat. I've always favored Nagel's approach because it emphasizes phenomenology: the subjective properties of conscious experience, such as why a visual experience has the form, structure, and qualities that it does, as compared to the subjective properties of an emotional experience, or of an olfactory experience. In philosophy, these properties are sometimes also called qualia: the redness of red, the pang of jealousy, the sharp pain or dull throb of a toothache. For an organism to be conscious, it has to have some kind of phenomenology for itself. Any kind of experience-any phenomenological property-counts as much as any other. Wherever there is experience, there is phenomenology; and wherever there is phenomenology, there is consciousness. A creature that comes into being only for a moment will be conscious just as long as there is something it is like to be it, even if all that's happening is a fleeting feeling of pain or pleasure. We can usefully distinguish the phenomenological properties of consciousness from its functional and behavioral properties. These refer to the roles that consciousness may play in the operations of our minds and brains, and to the behaviors an organism is capable of, by virtue of having conscious experiences. Although the functions and behaviors associated with consciousness are important topics, they are not the best places to look for definitions. Consciousness is first and foremost about subjective experience-it is about phenomenology. This may seem obvious, but it wasn't always so. At various times in the past, being conscious has been confused with having language, being intelligent, or exhibiting behavior of a particular kind. But consciousness does not depend on outward behavior, as is clear during dreaming and for people suffering states of total bodily paralysis. To hold that language is needed for consciousness would be to say that babies, adults who have lost language abilities, and most if not all nonhuman animals lack consciousness. And complex abstract thinking is just one small part-though possibly a distinctively human part-of being conscious. Some prominent theories in the science of consciousness continue to emphasize function and behavior over phenomenology. Foremost among these is the "global workspace" theory, which has been developed over many years by the psychologist Bernard Baars and the neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, among others. According to this theory, mental content (perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and so on) becomes conscious when it gains access to a "workspace," which-anatomically speaking-is distributed across frontal and parietal regions of the cortex. (The cerebral cortex is the massively folded outer surface of the brain, made up of tightly packed neurons.) When mental content is broadcast within this cortical workspace, we are conscious of it, and it can be used to guide behavior in much more flexible ways than is the case for unconscious perception. For example, I am consciously aware of a glass of water on the table in front of me. I could pick it up and drink it, throw it over my computer (tempting), write a poem about it, or take it back into the kitchen now that I realize it's been there for days. Unconscious perception does not allow this degree of behavioral flexibility. Another prominent theory, called "higher-order thought" theory, proposes that mental content becomes conscious when there is a "higher-level" cognitive process that is somehow oriented toward it, rendering it conscious. In this theory, consciousness is closely tied to processes like metacognition-meaning "cognition about cognition"-which again emphasizes functional properties over phenomenology (though less so than global workspace theory). Like global workspace theory, higher-order thought theories also emphasize frontal brain regions as key for consciousness. Although these theories are interesting and influential, I won't have much more to say about either in this book. This is because they both foreground the functional and behavioral aspects of consciousness, whereas the approach I will take starts from phenomenology-from experience itself-and only from there has things to say about function and behavior. The definition of consciousness as "any kind of subjective experience whatsoever" is admittedly simple and may even sound trivial, but this is a good thing. When a complex phenomenon is incompletely understood, prematurely precise definitions can be constraining and even misleading. The history of science has demonstrated many times over that useful definitions evolve in tandem with scientific understanding, serving as scaffolds for scientific progress, rather than as starting points, or ends in themselves. In genetics, for example, the definition of a "gene" has changed considerably as molecular biology has advanced. In the same way, as our understanding of consciousness develops, its definition-or definitions-will evolve too. If, for now, we accept that consciousness is first and foremost about phenomenology, then we can move on to the next question. How does consciousness happen? How do conscious experiences relate to the biophysical machinery inside our brains and our bodies? How indeed do they relate to the swirl of atoms or quarks or superstrings, or to whatever it is that the entirety of our universe ultimately consists in? The classic formulation of this question is known as the "hard problem" of consciousness. This expression was coined by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers in the early 1990s and it has set the agenda for much of consciousness science ever since. Here is how he describes it: It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. Chalmers contrasts this hard problem of consciousness with the so-called easy problem-or easy problems-which have to do with explaining how physical systems, like brains, can give rise to any number of functional and behavioral properties. These functional properties include things like processing sensory signals, selection of actions and the control of behavior, paying attention, the generation of language, and so on. The easy problems cover all the things that beings like u
Learn about everything from supernovas to wasp civilizations in these absorbing nonfiction reads.
From groundbreaking metaphysics to the neurological impact of psychedelic drugs to existence of aliens, this list has plenty to teach.
Learn about everything from supernovas to wasp civilizations in these absorbing nonfiction reads.
