Sign in with Facebook
First Principles Books
Showing 1-50 of 180
The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts (Audiobook)
by (shelved 4 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.07 — 9,946 ratings — published 2018
Principles: Life and Work (Audio CD)
by (shelved 4 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.10 — 65,551 ratings — published 2017
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Hardcover)
by (shelved 4 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.15 — 387,491 ratings — published 2014
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Hardcover)
by (shelved 4 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.10 — 56,515 ratings — published 2012
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character (Paperback)
by (shelved 4 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.27 — 214,834 ratings — published 1985
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Paperback)
by (shelved 4 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.34 — 1,220,328 ratings — published 2011
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.17 — 572,052 ratings — published 2011
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.37 — 219,004 ratings — published 2017
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.29 — 51,931 ratings — published 1979
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.21 — 30,356 ratings — published 1994
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 3.97 — 13,274 ratings — published 2010
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.14 — 12,153 ratings — published 2015
Thinking In Systems: A Primer (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.19 — 21,213 ratings — published 2008
Rationality: From AI to Zombies (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.32 — 1,745 ratings — published 2015
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.22 — 172,772 ratings — published 1984
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.17 — 9,415 ratings — published 2011
Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.03 — 2,546 ratings — published 2019
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.36 — 198,738 ratings — published 2018
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow (ebook)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.19 — 281,812 ratings — published 2015
Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as first-principles)
avg rating 4.33 — 16,145 ratings — published 2014
The Health And Wealth Paradox: How to Use First Principles Thinking to Achieve Both (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.31 — 36 ratings — published
General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (Revised Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 3.88 — 429 ratings — published 1969
Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.26 — 9,360 ratings — published 1963
Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.13 — 25,796 ratings — published 2019
The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.24 — 1,552 ratings — published 2018
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.06 — 27,774 ratings — published 1999
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.05 — 17,249 ratings — published 1993
Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.13 — 362 ratings — published 1972
Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.27 — 16,283 ratings — published 2021
Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.16 — 5,057 ratings — published 2014
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.08 — 202,015 ratings — published 2017
The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.18 — 10,037 ratings — published 2016
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.18 — 5,810 ratings — published 2015
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 3.74 — 6,402 ratings — published 2015
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 3.99 — 65,095 ratings — published 2014
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.11 — 15,421 ratings — published 2014
The Biology Book: From the Origin of Life to Epigenetics, 250 Milestones in the History of Biology (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.07 — 122 ratings — published 2015
The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.24 — 3,112 ratings — published 2012
The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.06 — 8,653 ratings — published 2012
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 3.92 — 55,421 ratings — published 2010
The Bond Book: Everything Investors Need to Know about Treasuries, Municipals, GNMAs, Corporates, Zeros, Bond Funds, Money Market Funds, and More (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.05 — 436 ratings — published 1991
The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.14 — 5,834 ratings — published 1996
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.40 — 10,404 ratings — published 1999
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.14 — 16,203 ratings — published 1957
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.17 — 1,450 ratings — published 1982
Haskell Programming From First Principles (ebook)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.31 — 270 ratings — published 2015
The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicles 0-4 (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 5.00 — 16 ratings — published 2009
The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 3: Sorting and Searching (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.42 — 510 ratings — published 1973
The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 4.43 — 522 ratings — published 1969
Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as first-principles)
avg rating 3.33 — 550 ratings — published 2007
“We also tend to undervalue the elementary ideas and overvalue the complicated ones. Most of us get jobs based on some form of specialized knowledge, so this makes sense. We don’t think we have much value if we know the things everyone else does, so we focus our effort on developing unique expertise to set ourselves apart. The problem is then that we reject the simple to make sure what we offer can’t be contributed by someone else. But simple ideas are of great value because they can help us prevent complex problems.
In identifying the Great Mental Models we have looked for elementary principles, the ideas from multiple disciplines that form a time-tested foundation. It may seem counterintuitive, to work on developing knowledge that is available to everyone, but the universe works in the same way no matter where you are in it. What you need is to understand the principles, so that when the details change you are still able to identify what is really going on. This is part of what makes the Great Mental Models so valuable—understanding the principles, you can easily change tactics to apply the ones you need.”
― The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts
In identifying the Great Mental Models we have looked for elementary principles, the ideas from multiple disciplines that form a time-tested foundation. It may seem counterintuitive, to work on developing knowledge that is available to everyone, but the universe works in the same way no matter where you are in it. What you need is to understand the principles, so that when the details change you are still able to identify what is really going on. This is part of what makes the Great Mental Models so valuable—understanding the principles, you can easily change tactics to apply the ones you need.”
― The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts
“There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis - incommensurable with the others - and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”
― The Abolition of Man
― The Abolition of Man
