Science-y Brainy Recommendations

[papayahed]

I realized yesterday that I may be getting dumber. Any recommendations for Science-y type books that may deal with space or physics or chemistry or math. But nothing way super hard. I'm not to big into paleoetology, evolution or the earth sciences.

Signed,
Getting dumber by the minute

[Jay]

uhm... some articles in National Geographic are quite fun. I've never read an entire book dealing with physics, space (if you don't count Apollo 13), chemistry or math, too dense for my dense self

[mono]

As Jay suggested, National Geographic often has some interesting stuff, along with another magazine, Scientific American.
As for books concerning science, I might try Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain (I typed a little about it here: http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=12932, or anything by Shlain seems really brain-expanding ), Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein, anything by Stephen Hawking (especially Universe In A Nutshell), The Botany Of Desire by Michael Pollan, and I have heard good things about The Secret Life Of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.
Good luck!

[mono]

While gazing at my bookshelf this morning, I happened to think of this thread. If you search especially for astronomy, quantam theory, and the like, I would highly recommend Carl Sagan. He also has quite a way of explaining things without a great amount of complexity; otherwise I could not read it, myself.

[Jay]

Papaya, if you spoke Czech I could lent you a magazine, a special issue about the solar system, VERY cool. Now I just hope you don't ask me to provide the magazine with a translation

[underground]

i tried carl sagan earlier this year, and didn't like him much. i would recommend a textbook because it usually starts from the very basic before it moves on to the more complicated stuff. also, i don't believe there's a physics/chemistry/math book that you can just "read"; most of the time you need to do the problems to understand an introduced concept. biology/psychology is another matter, which is why i like them better.

[Zippy]

Try A Brief History of Everything by Bill Bryson. It manages to be informative and entertaining at the same time.

[papayahed]

I picked up Richard Fenyman's "The Pleasure of finding things out". By the time I'm done with that book Jay should have that article translated for me...

[Jay]

ARTICLE? It's the WHOLE ISSUE!

[papayahed]

OK, I'll read Art & physics also.

[B-Mental]

You could try a collection of Issak Asimov's -The Rightness of Wrong." Easy to read chapters take you through scientific discoveries of the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. My favorite essay is his title essay, and if nothing else you'll feel smarter for reading it.

[PistisSophia]

I realized yesterday that I may be getting dumber. Any recommendations for Science-y type books that may deal with space or physics or chemistry or math. But nothing way super hard. I'm not to big into paleoetology, evolution or the earth sciences.

Signed,
Getting dumber by the minute

I can't even keep a checkbook straight but, Introducing Quantum has very funny cartoons. Not only that but just mention the names Nils Bohr, Max Planck or Schroedinger's Cat and you will gain quite an awestruck audience. Then just fake it.

[mono]

PistisSophia's suggestions just reminded me that you may also enjoy some work by Robert Anton Wilson, who wrote his own version of Schrodinger's Cat, but also other commendable books, like Quantam Psychology and The Cosmic Trilogy - good stuff!

[subterranean]

Zippy, I got interested in the title and I checked out Amazon.com. However I found that A Brief History of Everything is written by Ken Wilber, whilst Bill Bryson wrote A Short History of Nearly Everything . Do you happen to have read both books and advise which one is more simpler (and complete)?

Something I learnt today, which I read from the excerpt of A Brief History of Everything:

Pythagoreans introduced this term "Kosmos", which we ussualy translate as cosmos. But the original meaning of Kosmos was the patterned nature of process of all domains of existance, from matter to mind to God, and not merely the physical universe, which is ussualy what both " cosmos" and "universe" mean today.

Try A Brief History of Everything by Bill Bryson. It manages to be informative and entertaining at the same time.

[Wendigo_49]

I would try Godel, Escher, and Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. An informative book revolving around the concepts and creations of the three title characters. Hofstadter explains each new concept or idea in a very easy to read style with good explanations but to get the most out of the book, you will have to do the exercises.