Science and Inquiry discussion
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What science book is your most recent read? What do you think about it? Pt. 2
Courtney wrote: "Joel, I highly recommend "The Ancestors Tale" by him. I feel like it does a much more wonderful job with evolution and it does explain other things as well (such as the species concept)."Yes, I have a nice illustrated version of that book and I was leaving through it and it looked really scientific and detailed. I'm sure that one is a lot more valuable if I want to learn the details of how evolution works.
I second that. "The Ancestors Tale" is one of the most interesting and enchanting books I have read. The approach of tracing our lineage backward and examining our more and more distant relatives works well.
Mod
There is an updated Ancestors Tale with extra material, if anyone is going to read that book for the first time. It was one of my first Dawkins books.
Joel wrote: "Courtney wrote: "Just finished The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.. I don't honestly recommend reading it. I felt like he did a poor job explaining evolution and ..."I agree that Dawkins can be snarky at times.
If you want a more balanced view on evolution I highly recommend Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul by cell biologist Kenneth Miller, who also happens to be religious, but nevertheless defends evolution against unscientific attacks.
Steve wrote: "Joel wrote: "Courtney wrote: "Just finished The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.. I don't honestly recommend reading it. I felt like he did a poor job explaining e..."Does he discuss his religious views in the book?
Steven wrote: "Steve wrote: "Joel wrote: "Courtney wrote: "Just finished The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.. I don't honestly recommend reading it. I felt like he did a poor jo..."Been a while since I read it, but my recollection is that he doesn't delve deeply into his (Miller's) religious views other than to say that he does believe in God. He takes apart the arguments of Creationists without putting people down.
Go to the page for the book and read what it says about the author. That's your best guide.
Steve wrote: "I highly recommend Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul by cell biologist Kenneth Miller..."Funny, I just added that a few days ago after seeing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4r2J...
Aside: I actually did not like that talk so much because he focuses too much on the politics and not the science, which is what I came for. I think that the politics discussion needs to be separated from the scientific (and religious) debate (much like the Climate Change debate, but that's a whole other can of worms).
It's one thing to discuss what the genetic and paleontological evidence for evolution is, or what the intention of The Book of Genesis is and whether it conflicts with the science, and a wholly different discussion if there should be legal requirements for what schools - and parents - must teach and may teach.
That's why choosing books about evolution is so difficult - most books on the subject today focus more on the political (i.e. religion vs. science and education) on it's hard to
I also added Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel C. Dennett after seeing a great talk by him too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZX6a.... I really like some of his ideas, especially how he applies evolution to social issues, like how ideas and cultures evolve. But again, in that talk, he can't help but throw in a few jabs at religion. Some times it seems that many of these atheists are just too defensive. They make fun of "the old man in the sky", but I think that they miss the point of what religion is supposed to be.
Some other books/authors about evolution and life sciences I have on my read/to-read list are:
Charles Darwin
A Short History of Nearly Everything (read - my favorite book)
Richard Dawkins
Matt Ridley
The Gene: An Intimate History
Why Evolution Is True
Stephen Jay Gould
Edward O. Wilson
Daniel C. Dennett
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution
John Maynard Smith
The Evolution of Cooperation
The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What WeDo
Games of Life: Explorations in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life
Steven wrote: "Does he discuss his religious views in the book? ..."I haven't read the book, but from the title/description and if the book is anything like this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4r2J... I would surmise that the book is about the social and political aspects of the evolution education debate in America, and not a scientific text about evolution itself.
Joel wrote: "Steven wrote: "Does he discuss his religious views in the book? ..."I haven't read the book, but from the title/description and if the book is anything like this talk: https://www.youtube.com/wat..."
The author blurb does not mention religious belief at all. Hmm.
The last science book I read was The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction. The author's premise was that errors in prediction models was caused by model errors and not sensitive dependence on initial conditions. There was a lot more besides his discussion of model errors in the book.I gave it four stars. If anybody is interested I wrote a review for it.
@ JoelThese are a few more books you might find interesting:
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry
Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World
Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine
Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Surprising Science Hidden in Your Home
Venomous and Domesticated are incredibly interesting books.
You should also take a look at the books Nick Lane writes.
I'll second "Venomous". That was super interesting. There's a guy here at work who preached creationism to me. He listens to audio books, so I made him up a list. I'll share some of them here. Not all are evolution, but also social & other stuff that bear on it. He's an electrical engineer, but his religion got more intense as he aged & it muddled his logic. He loved Bad Science & it made the year before he retired much more pleasant even though he's still a holy roller.Major Transitions In Evolution by Anthony Martin, John Hawks
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Theory of Evolution: A History of Controversy by Edward J. Larson
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Biological Anthropology: An Evolutionary Perspective by Barbara J. King
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B. Carroll, Patrick Lawlor (Narrator)
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Voyage of the Beagle (abridged) by Charles Darwin, Janet Browne (Editor), Michael Neve (Editor)
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry by Christie Wilcox
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science by Robert M. Sapolsky
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Unseen Diversity: The World of Bacteria (Modern Scholar) by Betsey Dexter Dyer
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade, Michael Prichard
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Derek Perkins (Narrator)
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Modern Scholar: Behold the Mighty Dinosaur by John C. Kricher
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, Rupert Farley (Narrator)
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age by Daniel J. Levitin
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Elentarri wrote: "@ JoelThese are a few more books you might find interesting:..."
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong seems to be pseudoscience per this refutation:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells...
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution seems to fall into the same category.
The others look good, although Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine apparently has some issues due to its age. 20 years, at this point in time, is a really long time in our understanding of evolution due to the advances in DNA technology. I noticed that in a book about bugs. Whole taxonomies have changed.
There is a more recent book similar to Why We Get Sick. Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease is inferior in quality to the one I sited and has nothing new to add. Apparently there is a lack of research into Darwinian Medicine type topics or at least authors who are willing to write a decent book on the subject?Re Icons of Evolution: Thanks for the link. It's always interesting to read that sort of thing. BTW, Icons isn't a creationist book. The authors believe in evolution (if I remember correctly, or at least sound like they do), it's just some of the examples used in textbooks to prove it aren't accurate or correct. Or that was my impression of the book anyway.
Darwin's Black Box is written by a biochemist and is very technical. What he writes in technical information is accurate as far as I can tell - I have a degree in Biochemistry so I'm not completely ignorant of the technical stuff.
The whole point of reading different perspectives on an argument or subject is to make up your own mind.
Elentarri wrote: "There is a more recent book similar to Why We Get Sick. Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease is inferior in quality to the one I sited and has not..."Interesting. Thanks. I'm always amazed by the holes in our knowledge. I was reading various reviews & evaluating them that way. I'm sure the biotech in "Darwin's Black Box" is over my head, but after reading several other books like "Venomous", I'm dismissive of anything that relies on irreducible complexity.
@ JimI'm not convinced by the irreducible complexity argument either, but all the other information in the book was deliciously detailed instead of written for a dimwit, so the authors arguments get filed into a mental file for further research/thought. The author also gets brownie points for not preaching or bashing other authors. That is more than what I can say for Dawkins and the like.
@Elentarri @Jim
Thanks for the recommendations. I'll for sure add Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry and some of the others look really interesting too.
I've read both of Yuval Noah Harari's books, and while he brings up many interesting topics and gives good food for thought, I don't buy the grand worldviews he builds.
You listed Bill Nye - never read him, only seen him on TV - but he's another one of those people who come across as too driven by ideology.
Just read The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean. Here is my review:Reading Sam Kean is like eating popcorn. Tastes great, somewhat filling, and mildly nutritious, but somehow it leaves you feeling a bit empty. I’ve now read two of Kean’s books – The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist’s Thumb, and I greatly enjoyed both. He covers lots of ground and makes it interesting and entertaining. In this book, he covers the history of DNA and genetics from the early 1800s until today and hits all the major and even the minor players – Lamarck, Cuvier, Darwin, Mendel, Miescher, de Vries, Hunt Morgan, and of course Watson and Crick, as well as a few other notables, while throwing in some fun anecdotes and making the science clear and fun at the same time. But having read other popular science histories–Thomas Hager comes to mind–I feel like Kean’s treatment is slightly superficial. If you were to ask me in six months from now to recount some of the things I learned from this book, I’d likely come up empty (just like if you’d ask me now about what I remember from The Disappearing Spoon). It also doesn’t help that he overdoes it on the clichés, references, and wordplay. The book just doesn’t seem “intelligent” enough. He does address some important philosophical questions, especially on the last chapter where he presents a very insightful discussion on genetics and racism, but overall, the tone of the book seems most appropriate for a bright high schooler. But who am I to complain? I really enjoyed myself reading it, and learned a great deal about a topic I didn’t know much about. It would be like complaining that they put too much butter in my popcorn. Yum!
I just finished Virus Hunter: Thirty Years of Battling Hot Viruses Around the World. It was quite an enjoyable read. C.J. Peters has worked for USMARIID (basically research for the United States Military) and currently works for the CDC. He researchs so called "hot viruses" around the world. He primarily works with Hemorrhagic Fevers and has been involved with the Hantavirus outbreak in the 1990's and some early Ebola work. It reads like an old war hero recounting his story.
I just finished Thomas S. Kuhn's classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The book hardly requires an introduction. Check out my review on the book's page to see what I thought of it!
Mod
I have recently read the "The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is". This is an excellect book dealing with the emergence of Life and how it evolved it way.
Just got The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars out of the library.
Most recent read on topic = Rupert Sheldrake's 'Science Delusion' and 'Morphogenetic Fields'
John wrote: "Most recent read on topic = Rupert Sheldrake's 'Science Delusion' and 'Morphogenetic Fields'"I've read Science Delusion and Sheldrake didn't strike me as someone who knows how to apply the scientific method. What is your opinion on the matter?
I was surprised Sheldrake's web site didn't try to sell me anything. It reads like one of the pseudoscience sites that try to sell natural products that are free of chemicals. RationalWiki has an entry about him.
Just finished "The Unfolding of Language " by Guy Deutscher. It was probably the most in - depth book about linguistics I have read yet, but it was quite enjoyable. I learned a lot about how languages evolve, erode, and evolve differently as time goes by. Historic evidence and logical hypotheses explain a lot of what. on the surface, just seems confusing and stupid at times!
Nancy wrote: "Just finished "The Unfolding of Language " by Guy Deutscher. It was probably the most in - depth book about linguistics I have read yet, but it was quite enjoyable. I learned a lot about how langua..."I read that a while back. It was excellent. You might want to check out John McWhorter's The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language. It's very similar, and written in a style which is very entertaining. He goes into more details on certain topics (and less on others).
Just fished "lab girl". As per the writing style it's great. As a plant biotechnologist I expected more information about plants but was disappointed.
Nazima wrote: "Just fished "lab girl". ...As a plant biotechnologist I expected more information about plants but was disappointed."Thanks for the warning.
Thank you Joel. Funny, I just checked out a book on cds by John McWhorter called "the Story of Human Language. " I will put the Babel one on my reading list too. linguistics fascinates me.
Nancy wrote: "Thank you Joel. Funny, I just checked out a book on cds by John McWhorter called "the Story of Human Language. " I will put the Babel one on my reading list too. linguistics fascinates me."I've got The Story of Human Language on my to "read" list. It's extremely highly rated - 4.44 - almost unheard of on this site. It's in The Great Courses series. I tried getting it from my library, but they only had it in several parts so I couldn't be bothered, but I did get Myths, Lies and Half-Truths of Language Usage intead. It's a DVD and you can watch him lecture. It's a more specific topic - usage and "mis-usage" of language. He's of the opinion that there is no such thing as bad usage, just bad usage by current standards. I did buy a used copy of Henry Watson Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage on his recommendation, and it was great fun leafing through (sorry, but I'm not yet at the stage of reading through a dictionary from cover to cover for fun).
Do check out my "language" bookshelf, though: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
I've read a few on that list.
I just finished Naive Set Theory by Paul R. Halmos. Here is my review:This book is brilliant. Simply brilliant. It is so much more than a math textbook. It is a glimpse of how mathematics, and mathematicians, work.
The operative word in the title is “Naïve”. As the author explains in the introduction, it means that he takes a somewhat informal approach to axioms and proofs, but as also stated in the introduction, the book is axiomatic in that he does state axioms and use them in subsequent proofs. The way it is unlike other formal axiomatic books is that axioms and proofs are not simply stated distilled down to their final concise and often incomprehensible form. Instead, Halmos lets you in on the motivation of why things proceed the way they do, even at the expense of formality.
For example, he spends the second last chapter giving you the rules of cardinal number arithmetic before even defining them in the last chapter – that comes in the last chapter, but not before he explains why we chose that definition among other alternatives.
These motivating passages are actually less frequent than I would have liked, but they do enough to motivate not only specific definitions, but to motivate what the axiomatic set theory approach is all about. What I got out of it is that set theorists aim to find definitions of intuitive, self-evident concepts using the bare minimum of new constructions. I’ll let the author explain on page 25:
“The concept of an ordered pair could have been introduced as an additional primitive, axiomatically endowed with just the right properties, no more and no less. In some theories this is done. The mathematician’s choice is between having to remember a few more axioms and having to forget a few accidental facts; the choice is pretty clearly a matter of taste. Similar choices occur frequently in mathematics…”
The reason this is done, as is hinted to later in the book in the chapter on the axiom of choice is that mathematicians want to know if the existing set of axioms force an obvious conclusion, or whether a fact that seems self-evident can be dropped and the remaining axioms remain consistent and permits a more general mathematical system.
This book is by no means easy, but the author’s tone is just relaxed enough to relieve some of the intimidation that comes with studying a formal mathematics textbook. He can even be quite humorous at times – I laughed out loud reading a passage on page 45:
“The slight feeling of discomfort that the reader may experience in connection with the definition of natural numbers is quite common and in most cases temporary."
How many math books are this much fun?
Joel wrote: "I just finished Naive Set Theory by Paul R. Halmos. Here is my review:This book is brilliant. Simply brilliant. It is so much more than a math textbook. It is a glimp..."
Without being a math major .... will I GET it?
Nancy wrote: "Joel wrote: "I just finished Naive Set Theory by Paul R. Halmos. Here is my review:Without being a math major ... Will I GET it? ..."
Hmm... It's not easy. If math "isn't your thing", I'd recommend something easier.
Joel wrote: "Nancy wrote: "Joel wrote: "I just finished Naive Set Theory by Paul R. Halmos. Here is my review:Without being a math major ... Will I GET it? ..."
Hmm... It's not e..."
I'd recommend The Grapes of Math: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life by Alex Bellos, Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio, Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh, and Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics by William Dunham or anything else by those authors, as well as anything by Ian Stewart or Martin Gardner. Paul Hoffman's The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth was also excellent.
I'm listening to Brian M. Fagan's lecture on Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations. He has some weird ways of pronouncing things, but it's interesting. One of the things I like best is how he points out that "We just don't know." on a fairly regular basis. It's amazing how much information we've gleaned from so few fossils, but also how many inferences I thought were facts. An interesting example is that my idea of a Neanderthal is based on a century old artist's depiction that turned out to be of one, old arthritic individual, so it's not very accurate.
Joel wrote: "Nancy wrote: "Thank you Joel. Funny, I just checked out a book on cds by John McWhorter called "the Story of Human Language. " I will put the Babel one on my reading list too. linguistics fascinate..."Thank you, I found a lot of good ideas there. It is the Great Courses CDs I'm listening too, of "The Story of Human Language." I was fortunate enough to stumble upon it at the library here in Erie. So far I am very much enjoying it.
I literally put Marvin Minsky's "The Society of Mind" back on the shelf for now. It wasn't that I disliked it, or that I didn't understand it, it was just so long and seemed to be taking a long time to get wherever it's going. I'm sure it's worthwhile; I'll pick it back up eventually.
I just finished Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.This book.. was odd. There were many aspects and chapters I liked and I learned new things. However, the author had an annoying tendency to insert their own beliefs (about things like gender identification, genetically engineering humans, etc) into the book. I only caught it a few times, but it was enough that I nearly put it down. I personally wouldn't mind reading science based books about those topics, but the author would literally have either a paragraph or a few pages dedicated to his beliefs and made it like fact. Furthermore, not every chromosome actually had a gene that he talked about.
Overall, I'd rate it a 2.5 stars. The good chapters were excellent, but some of the chapters were just... cringey.
Courtney wrote: "I just finished Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.This book.. was odd. There were many aspects and chapters I liked and I learned new things. However, the author h..."
Are those believes that the author mentions "scientific" (in the Popperian sense: testable hypotheses)? If so, then as cringe-worthy as they are, they worthwhile believes for him to mention and should be considered scientifically. They just might be true. That book, after all, is a book about science.
Not In least. The belief that bothered me the most was his... statement that gender differences aren't heavily shaped by society. His argument was in the Chapter 15: Sex regarding the different paternal and maternal chromosomes make. His "evidence" was citing the way his own children behaved and a case from the 1970's regarding an attempt raise a biological male as a girl (the biological male was not transgender). There were other instances were I wouldn't call it.... wrong just highly inappropriate for the book.
The idea of gender differences as a product of evolution is a well worn topic and highly controversial, for obvious political reasons. As a book about genetic biology, it's hardly surprising that it would take the side that gender is more determined by biology than society. I think that is the position that most of the (non-social) scientists take and the position more widely accepted by science in general these day. It's a position not liked by in the more liberal arts oriented fields of humanities and social sciences, but as a science book, I think it's natural for him to take that position.
I don't think it was suitable for this book. If he was examining gender identity, sexual selection in humans, etc I wouldn't find it inappropriate. But making a claim in a "pop science" book and only using that for support is inappropriate. Anecdotal evidence + talking about the X chromosome does not really qualify as fact or evidence. Also,I don't think there is a gene that has little boys preferring trucks over barbies and vice Versace.
Recently Finished The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. A good book about the foundations of epidemiology. I am constantly amazed at what people believed ~200 years ago. I wonder what things we firmly believe in only for it be wrong.
Courtney wrote: "Recently Finished The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. A good book about the foundations of epidemi..."I enjoyed that, too. The conditions were perhaps the most memorable feature of the book, though. Dipping water out of garbage & dung filled gutters only to drink it after it settled? Ugh.
I couldn't give that one more than 3 stars, mostly because of that last chapter, where he was going on about suitcase nuclear bombs.
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Science and Inquiry
Books mentioned in this topic
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Betsey Dexter Dyer (other topics)Carl Sagan (other topics)
Carl Sagan (other topics)
Yuval Noah Harari (other topics)
Carlo Rovelli (other topics)
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Elentarri, I didn't consider the intelligent design part before.