4 ms·

Can you (or someone else) recommend me some great books about philosophy, history and science? I feel like I haven't read many books from these sections and I'd

• smacktoward 7y ago
  To get you started, I’ll recommend you one book that checks all three boxes at once: Louis Menand’s magisterial The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28202 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28202). Enjoy :-D
• peteforde 7y ago
  Yes! Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari Astrophysics For People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson bonus round: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Shoedog by Phil Knight The Death of Truth by Michiko Kakutani
  • keiferski 7y ago
    These are all pseudo, pop-science books. I would recommend reading the works of actual scientists and philosophers directly, or textbooks.
    • phosfox 7y ago
      Are there any particular ones you could recommend?
      • keiferski 7y ago
        FiveBooks.com is a good place to find books. Here are some relevant lists: https://fivebooks.com/category/philosophy/ https://fivebooks.com/category/philosophy/ https://fivebooks.com/category/mathematics-and-science/ https://fivebooks.com/category/mathematics-and-science/ https://fivebooks.com/category/technology/ https://fivebooks.com/category/technology/
    • peteforde 7y ago
      This is not a contribution. Telling someone asking for enjoyable books to read to skip bestselling books by Nobel laureates to instead read textbooks, whitepapers and other raw sources makes you sound like a pretentious asshole.
  • adamsea 7y ago
    I actually would encourage you to start with the Socratic Dialogues. Greek philosophy is at the root of western philosophy and so much thought in general. They are extremely short and accessible and use plain language. The Dialogues, like any philosophy, have their flaws, but I think they do a great job of teaching a certain way or analyzing an idea. They were actually written by Plato (Socrates left no written material behind) but are the closest we have to Socrates and Socratic thought. I personally found a course on the fundamentals of western philosophy super fascinating. Aside from the dialogues the primary sources can be tough going so a class or a reputable-looking reader on each thinker (good used bookstores will have these, or just google and get whatever is most recent and recommended) is recommended. In rough chronological order: - Socrates - Plato - Descartes (I don’t know much about medieval though and have skipped over it) - Spinoza - Rousseau - Kant (can be dense/boring) - Hegel The fascinating thing is to read each thinker, absorb their conception of things, and learn what they got _wrong_. And then to read the next thinker and learn what _they_ got wrong!