Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time. Basic Books, 1988.
Often derided as the book that everybody buys and nobody reads, Brief History remains a clever, concise reflection on whether physics can achieve a theory that explains, well, everything. Here, Hawking says it can, but since then he’s wisely changed his mind.
Hofstadter, Douglas, Godel, Escher, Bach. Basic Books, 1979.
This wildly inventive exploration of recursion, self-referentiality, human and machine minds and all manner of other metatopics by Martin Gardner’s successor as a columnist for Scientific American (Hofstadter’s “Metamagical Themas” was an anagram of Gardner’s “Mathematical Games”) still exudes an aura of geek chic.
Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. Harper & Row, 1954.
The British novelist, essayist and seeker ushered in the psychedelic and New Age eras with this account of his encounter with mescaline, which reveals “what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation, the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.” Kids in the sixties thought, Gimme summa that!
Isaacson, Walter, Einstein: His Life and Universe. Simon & Schuster, 2007.
Isaacson’s graceful, warm, thorough overview of Einstein’s multi-dimensional life—scientific, personal, philosophical, political--has quickly become the definitive biography (although physicists may still prefer the technical detail of Subtle Is the Lord by Abraham Pais).
James, William, Varieties of Religious Experience. 1903.
As fresh now as when it was published a century ago, this extraordinary book—by a seeker desperate for answers and yet too skeptical to settle for any--remains the best attempt to explain spirituality from a rational, scientific yet open-minded perspective.
Johnson, George, Fire in the Mind. Knopf, 1995.
A veteran science journalist meditates on the differences and, more importantly, similarities of diverse religious and scientific quests for truth in his native New Mexico. Johnson’s perspective is so subtle and sophisticated that some readers may not realize how radical it is.
Judson, Horace Freeland, The Eighth Day of Creation. Simon and Schuster, 1979.
The journalist Judson provides an exhaustive history—based on interviews with more than 100 major participants--of the discovery of the double helix and the genetic code. Eighth Day does for these biological breakthroughs what The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (see below) did for the Manhattan Project.
Jung, Karl, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 1934 (in German).
Is Jung, the Godfather of the New Age and Human Potential movements, more influential now than Freud? As this basic account of his psychology shows, Jung offers a more expansive, spiritually resonant view of human nature and possibilities than his gloomy one-time mentor. On good days, I’m a Jungian, on bad days, a Freudian.
Keeley, Lawrence, War Before Civilization. Oxford University Press, 1996.
The anthropologist Keeley argues that, contrary to the Rousseauian “myth of the peaceful savage,” humans fought wars well before the advent of civilization. This is the most empirically and analytically grounded of a wave of recent books rubbing our faces in our violent history.
Keller, Evelyn Fox, A Feeling for the Organism. Times Books, 1984.
Keller tells the tale of how Barbara McClintock, a Nobel laureate and true original, discovered “jumping genes.” A philosopher and feminist, Keller also exposes how science ignores findings and ideas outside of the mainstream, particularly when they come from a woman.
Kevles, Daniel, In the Name of Eugenics. Knopf, 1985.
Genetic determinists who denounce non-determinists as anti-scientific, politically correct sissies should be force-fed this chilling history of how human genetics has been misapplied not only by Nazis by even by well-meaning progressives in the U.K., U.S. and elsewhere.
Konner, Melvin, The Tangled Wing. Henry Holt, 1983.
With an M.D. and two Ph.D.s, in neuroscience and anthropology, Konner has done time in laboratories and among the African !Kung. He is also a graceful writer and subtle thinker. His rare combination of talents is on display in this graceful rumination on how our evolutionary past constrains our futures.
Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962.
This sneaky, subversive assault on conventional notions of scientific truth and progress triggered a revolution itself within the philosophy of science. Be sure to note where Kuhn compares scientists to drug addicts.
Lilly, John, The Center of the Cyclone. Bantam Books, 1972.
The inspiration for the films Altered States and Day of the Dolphin, the mad scientist Lilly pioneered research on sensory deprivation, bionic brain-control, dolphin intelligence, psychedelics and other exotic mind-related topics. His later books fell off the edge of intelligibility (perhaps because Lilly became addicted to the powerful anesthetic ketamine), but this autobiography provides a more or less clear account of his early forays into the hinterlands of consciousness.
Malcolm, Janet, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. Vintage Books, 1982.
Malcolm somehow pulls off the postmodern, self-referential, hall-of-mirrors schtick without becoming intolerably pretentious. Her analysis of psychoanalysis—the perfect subject for her--is all the more devastating because she so clearly gets it. With friends like this, Freudians must think, who needs enemies?
Mandelbrot, Benoit, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. W.H. Freeman, 1977.
The discoverer (inventor?) of the iconic Mandelbrot set helped launch the field of chaos with this bombastic, brilliant treatise on fractals, mathematical objects that mimic phenomena as diverse as clouds, capillaries and stock-market fluctuations. Caveat: If you are approached by an investment “expert” who favors fractal models, run.
Mead, Margaret, Coming of Age in Samoa. American Museum of Natural History, 1928.
Mead’s book, published when she was still in her twenties and based on her field work among the Samoans, depicts them as peaceful, sensuous flower children uncorrupted by modern civilization. Critics accuse Mead of projecting her preconceptions onto her subjects, but that is even truer of the critics.
McPhee, John, Basin and Range. Farar, Strauss, Giroux, 1981.
For ill or good, McPhee aroused literary ambitions in hordes of younger science writers with his work, including this classic on geophysics. McPhee not only explains science; he dramatizes it with his superbly crafted, novelistic renderings of character and setting.
Minsky, Marvin, The Society of Mind. Simon and Schuster, 1985.
The pioneer of artificial intelligence argues that minds are packed with many components that cooperate and clash as they try to solve problems. Mirroring its theme, this delightfully eccentric book consists not of a continuous, conventional narrative but of one-page essays with titles like “The Causal Now,” “The Power of Negative Thinking” and “Self-Knowledge Is Dangerous.”
Monod, Jacques, Chance and Necessity. Vintage, 1972.
The French biologist and Nobel laureate wrestles with arguably the most important question in biology: Was life an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and chemistry, or a once-in-eternity-and-infinity fluke? Monod argues persuasively for the latter, but who knows?
Nagel, Thomas, Mortal Questions. Cambridge, 1979.
Most readers no doubt buy this collection of essays for “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Nagel’s famous take on consciousness and the solipsism problem (no one can really know what’s going on in anyone else’s head). But all of Nagel’s essays—on death, war, sexual perversion, ruthlessness--are insightful and lucid, especially for a philosopher.
Overbye, Dennis, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos. HarperCollins, 1992.
I had just completed a big article on cosmology and was considering writing a book when I read Lonely Hearts and realized I couldn’t match Overbye. He not only makes esoteric cosmic theories almost comprehensible; he also captures the mad passion of scientists trying to solve the riddle of the universe.
Pagel, Heinz, The Dreams of Reason. Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Although Gleick’s Chaos (see above) is more thorough and objective, the physicist Pagel provides a more poetic, passionate, personal insider’s look at the potential of chaos research to revolutionize science.
Penrose, Roger, The Emperor’s New Mind. Oxford University Press, 1989.
In this dense, challenging, fascinating book, one of modern physics’ most original thinkers argues that the brain is not just a conventional albeit very complicated computer but will require radically new physics to explain.
Pinker, Steven, How the Mind Works. Norton, 1997.
Thank God most scientists can’t write as well as Pinker, or we journalists would be out of jobs. Pinker popularized evolutionary psychology with this bestseller, which describes the mind as a grab-bag of adaptations designed by natural selection. But can you really know how the mind works without knowing how the brain works?
Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Springer 1934 (in German).
Scientists’ favorite philosopher, who denounced dogmatism but was notoriously dogmatic himself, introduces falsification as the fundamental criterion for distinguishing science from pseudo-science.
