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> every discipline has it's most fundamental books ... e.g. philosophy -> Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, civil law -> code civil, christianity -> bible, etc. one s
by madhadron 7y ago
> every discipline has it's most fundamental books ... e.g. philosophy -> Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, civil law -> code civil, christianity -> bible, etc. one should read to get a truly deep understanding.
I dispute this idea. For some disciplines, this may be so. For other, such as physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, civil engineering, poetry...actually, for most disciplines they aren't based on fundamental books. They're based on a living community of practice.
In these disciplines a book is important only insofar as it can be used to increase your abilities. No one goes and studies the textual details of Landau & Lifshitz as a guide to anything, any more than they do so with TAOCP.
Rather than worry about fundamental books, worry about opening up black boxes at a steady rate.
- pacbard 7y agoBooks here could be a stand-in for what Thomas Kuhn has called paradigms [1]. Broadly, each science has a core set of beliefs that are accepted by a majority of the scientists working within that discipline. Books can be seen as the formalization of a paradigm as a way to teach new people (e.g., undergraduates) how to operate within a discipline as opposed to research papers where the boundaries of current paradigms are tested and pushed (or opening up the black box, as you mention). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
- TheRealPomax 7y agoExcept there are. For example, biology has "Campbell Biology", formerly just called "Biology", and it gets frequent revisions to ensure it's still relevant as the field evolves. The question as posed does not strike me as one of worry, but of curiosity: what ARE the seminal works that the different fields point to as being the "bibles" of their discipline? Comp. Sci. has Knuth, Russel and Norvig, etc. Other fields most certainly have their own, and knowing which those are is interesting and worth getting an answer to.
- gonzus 7y agoCan you clarify which book do you mean when you mention "Russel"? I cannot pinpoint it, unlike the other two.
- arh68 7y agolikely Russell & Norvig, aka that AI book with Alan Turing & a chessboard on the cover http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/ http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence:_A_Modern_Approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence:_A_Mod...
- TheRealPomax 7y agoNot "Russel", "Russel and Norvig".
- Myrmornis 7y agoI have a PhD in biology and I've never heard of Campbell Biology, or any book just referred to as "Biology".
- jahbrewski 7y ago“Neil Allison Campbell (April 17, 1946 – October 21, 2004) was an American scientist known best for his textbook, Biology, first published in 1987 and repeatedly through many subsequent editions. The title is popular worldwide and has been used by over 700,000 students in both high school and college-level classes.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Campbell_(scientist) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Campbell_(scientist)
- Myrmornis 7y agoYup, so an undergrad textbook that's popular in some countries. Hardly foundational!
- iskander 7y agoIt seems like it's a commonly used undergrad textbook?
- physicsyogi 7y agoI agree with a lot of this. The one thing that I've found with some of these "fundamental" books is that there are gems of information that can be very helpful for specific problems. For instance, Landau and Lifshitz's statistical mechanics book has first-rate description of entropy and multiplicity. And TAOCP has an incredibly thorough discussion of combinatorics that I found invaluable.
- znpy 7y ago> every discipline has it's most fundamental books I'd say: every discipline has it's most fundamental memes
- gumby 7y ago(to non-znpy HNers: this looks like an offhand joke but it's not. This is why those books are still read, and to some degree is how/why various disciplines split apart or even unify)
- throwaway_bad 7y agoI think you're right that you shouldn't learn from the "fundamental" books but there definitely are such a thing as fundamental books. They are usually hugely influential in their times but have been refined or made easier to digest since. If you care deeply about your field you should read them at some point to see how ideas evolved historically. English: Shakespeare Biology: Darwin's Origin of Species Math: Euclid's Elements For OP's topic, I'd say Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is up there for computer science.
- playing_colours 7y agoFocusing on mathematics, I think about two kinds of foundational books. 1. Historically foundational: books that brought important ideas, introduced a new branch, progressed the maths significantly. You can read them these days, but their content, proofs, language, etc. is not up to date. Examples: Elements by Euclid, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Newton, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae by Gauss. 2. Modern foundational books: The ones that can be used for studying now. Books that are clearly written, popular, cover their subject well. Examples: Visual Complex Analysis, Spivak’s Calculus, Linear Algebra Done Right, Hardy’s An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers.