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Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Eight Books Everyone Should Read
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jtokoph 14y agoIt's good to see the bible on that list. I should get around to reading it.
- mylittlepony 14y agoWhy is it good? Only Christians should read it (to become atheists). For anyone else, I think it's a waste of time.
- russellallen 14y agoIt is a collection of writings containing some of the oldest recorded human stories, poetry and philosophy, law, history, and myth. Reading it is no more a waste of time than reading the Iliad or Plato.
- barry-cotter 14y agoThe Iliad is both entertaining and well written, while Plato is intellectually stimulating where he's not just wrong. The Bible is not remotely as well written as the Iliad, nor is it comparable as a work of philosophy to Plato.
- phaus 14y agoI'm in the middle of a philosophy 101 class. I had been meaning to read the works of Plato, but until now I was busy learning other stuff. I have to say that surprisingly, I have lost all respect for Plato after reading Crito (It's Plato's take on what Socrates' reasons for not escaping his execution.) It contains the most illogical, oversimplified, flat-out erroneous thought processes I've ever encountered. If Crito is an accurate representation of Socrates' philosophy, I have to question the intelligence of anyone who felt that he was "wise." I was pretty dissapointed by this, because I enjoyed some of Plato's other writings. I do happen to agree that the Iliad is far superior to the quality of writing found in the bible.
- w0utert 14y agoI'm not sure why you were expecting to respect Plato for everything he wrote about. Plato may have been one of the brilliant minds of all times and have produced some of the most valuable bits of Western culture, history and philosophy, but even for his own time the guy had some seriously disturbing ideas about what the world should look like. The Republic for example has been a great inspiration for fascist ideas or the promotion of human inequality.
- phaus 14y agoI didn't expect to agree with him on everything, but I did expect the quality of his writing to be pretty consistent. Crito is often used to illustrate logical reasoning, yet the arguments it presents are so ridiculous that no reasonable, logical person would agree with them.
- jlgreco 14y agoYou may be interested in Diogenes the Cynic, a contemporary of Plato. He hated Plato, he accused him of entirely misunderstanding Socrates and regularly interrupted Plato's lectures to ridicule him.
- pretoriusB 14y ago>The Bible is not remotely as well written as the Iliad, nor is it comparable as a work of philosophy to Plato. Tens of Thousands of top notch literary critics, philosophers and intellectuals beg to differ...
- jlgreco 14y agoConsidering the bible is not even a cohesive work with a single style, language, or even writer, it really never stood a chance of standing next to the Illiad as a work of literature. It's importance, besides the obvious importance of a particular translation itself, is solely historic, cultural.
- gruseom 14y agoThis is so tendentious a thing to say as to just be weird. Do Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, M. H. Abrams, and pretty much every other scholar who has written about it, not know what literature is?
- jlgreco 14y agoIf they think it stands on it's own literary merits, then they are deluded. The Iliad is far more sophisticated. If we want to talk about importance then that is another story, but merely on the quality of writing there is hardly a comparison between the two. "The Bible" is a curated though disorganized collection of confused and contradictory prose and poetry, many of which were evolved rather than written, filled with massive sections of irrelevant tedium (Have you read Numbers? I mean honestly...). Together it only forms a cohesive work with logic-defying "interpretation". The King James translation has literary importance for it's influence on the English language, and the collection in general obviously has immense historic importance, but other than that? Yeah... no. On the other-hand the Iliad is a masterpiece of epic poetry and a fine example of writing by all standards. No excuses need to be made for it, and that really is the most telling thing to realize.
- gruseom 14y ago
- lolcraft 14y agoThe Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes are the shit, though. But honestly, yeah, the Bible is the poorest written fiction I've ever not finished reading. It's not even worth the paper as a religious reference, surprisingly. Maybe reading something like Norman Cohn's "The Pursuit of the Millenium" would be more useful for someone wanting to understand (more deeper) christianity, though it's quite a heavyweight. And I understand Feuerbach's "Essence of Christianity" is a classic, though I'm yet to read it.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoSo how can that be? That those presumably derivative texts know more about Christianity than the authoritative text, which you say is not worth the paper? Here, I'll guess: They're making stuff up. Rationalizing, trying to put a chaotic mess into some sort of order, but in the process injecting a lot of themselves. So it comes down to, read your favorite author and believe what you want. Which is not going to go down well with a lot of people.
- unalone 14y agoIf you're going to read the Bible for pure enjoyment, please avoid the King James. Versions exist which are indeed enjoyable to read, yet faithful enough to the original texts that you get something interesting out of them. I think my favorite anecdote about the importance of translation comes from Jack Miles and is about the Book of Job. Translated the King James way, at the end of Job God reveals himself and Job says something like, "I know that you can do all things, and that I am an ignorant muddler before you. Now that I can see you truly, I despise myself and repent." So the story ends, basically, with Job saying that God is too big and awesome for him to comprehend, and that he is not worthy, he is not worthy! But Miles argues that the original passage is cleverer and more word-play-y than the popular translation gives it credit for. He puts forth a far more fascinating translation, which paraphrased is something like: "You know you can do anything. Nobody can stop you. You think I'm ignorant, and scold me for talking of things beyond my comprehension. But now that I have seen you for myself, I shudder in sorrow for mortal clay." He judges God and finds him wanting. And God restores his money and good health, and then for the rest of the Old Testament, he falls silent. Nobody else speaks with God throughout that chronological narrative. When God does show up again, it's as Jesus – a vessel through which God can experience human suffering for himself and try to redeem it, rather than merely judging it. And as Christ he allows himself to undergo even worse pain than he inflicted upon Job, in the hopes that mankind might one day rise above that suffering. The Bible is a much smarter and better book than it's given credit for, both by atheists and Christians alike. In the hands of somebody insightful and informed, it is wise as fuck, and thought-provoking as anything. (It's no Bhagavad Gita, but then nothing's as wonderful as the Bhagavad Gita.) In the hands of somebody either trying to read it as a narrative that will somehow explain the existence of God, or, worse, as a series of rules for living that God gave us, it's dull and ponderous, but don't let the yahoos ruin a good thing. The day we respect the Bible as the slippery and subtle book that it is is the day religious fundamentalism will no longer have an excuse for being.
- jacques_chester 14y agoWhether you like it or not, if you intend to acquaint yourself with "the classics", you won't understand half of the allusions made without first reading the bible. It's like watching Futurama without a pop science level of familiarity with physics, maths and so on.
- msvan 14y agoI'll go ahead and claim that most of these books are pretty dry these days. Historically significant, yes, and everyone should definitely know of them and what they're about. But reading them probably won't make much of a difference to your life. The same information can be found in other places these days, in forms that are more comfortable for the brain to digest.
- passionfruit 14y agoReading large works like these may stimulate your thinking much more than getting the same information in a shorter format.
- derrida 14y agoI think msvan may have been referring to books too. For instance: Origin of the Species spends a great deal of time presenting evidence for why evolution should be believed. At the time this was of course necessary to convince all of the skeptics. Now, it can be sort of dry. Dry as in "not stimulating". It's much more interesting to follow a book that deals with things that are controversial today. Reading Dawkins for instance is likely to push some buttons even in those who accept evolution. It's also arguable that this sort of thing isn't science, it's just philosophy (the idea of the Meme, for instance) and if it is philosophy, how can we separate the philosophical import of evolution from the science of evolution. Yes, saying this is likely to rile up some Dawkins defenders, but then I've proven my point, the issues it discusses are not dry the way that pages and pages of evidence presented for an argument you already accept the conclusion of is. But I shouldn't really speak, I barely read these days.
- notahacker 14y agoThat depends on the individual work, and how you respond to authors tending to assume you have the same knowledge and interests in the subject matter as a typical expert, a century or five back. If your reaction to reading The Prince, for example, is to go off and read other historical analysis of the many obscure conflicts he references, and discussions of the extent to which certain comments may have been intended as satire, then it might make a stimulating starting point for study. If you're simply looking to gain insight into the motivations of people in power, then you'd be better off reading an article-length summary of his key points and prioritising on to short-form content about Westphalian states and the limitations of democratic processes. Ultimately, you'll learn more relevant lessons from that than you would from Machiavellian observations on the castle of Milan causing more trouble for the Sforzas than it saves or the susceptibility of the Spaniards to cavalry and the Switzers to close combat. If you want to learn about markets, capitalism and pricing, then economists of all stripes will agree that the Wealth of Nations is commendably broad and readable but very outdated in its examples; many of the features of modern capitalism and the entire theories behind modern anticapitalism simply hadn't been invented then. If you want to learn that "capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself", it's a strange, rather agrarian-focused introduction that won't give you any insight into modern debates about welfare or Wall Street.
- tcskeptic 14y agoWhat a ponderous, pretentious load. This strikes me very much as a list of "Books I want everyone to know that I think everyone should read" which is very different from the stated title. Is Origin Of Species really a better choice than almost anything on the topic by Dawkins or Gould for the general purpose of "[learning] of our kinship with all other life on Earth"?
- Happyhippy 14y agoThey are selections for everyone, including 'beginners' which I assume is the reason he selected them. They would have very little quoting other sources with little explanations why. Not a bad selection imo, though I would have thrown in the Torah/Koran as well as the bible to inform you of all the major religions and differences. And maybe remove Art of War for a maths primer like Euclid's Elements or somthing.
- mikevm 14y agoSorry, but "Origin of Species" is not a good beginner's book on evolution theory. There are much better modern books on the subject, for example Neil Shubin's or Jerry Coyne's books.
- LeafStorm 14y agoJust a note: the Torah is a subset of the Tanakh, which is itself a subset of the Bible. (Christians refer to the Torah as the Pentateuch and the Tanakh as the Old Testament.)
- gyardley 14y agoSure, although if you want to read the Torah / Tanakh as Jews understand it, I wouldn't just pick up a Bible. Assuming you don't read Hebrew, I'd get the New Jewish Publication Society translation.
- MaggieL 14y ago"You should read this, but I know you won't bother because you're a Yahoo. Don't worry, because I've told you what to think about it. Carry on."
- ekianjo 14y ago"The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook) – “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”" : Someone must have had problems understanding Capitalism, it seems.
- hackerboos 14y ago>Someone must have had problems understanding Capitalism, it seems An obtuse comment considering he's a leading scientist. To call capitalism an 'economy of greed' isn't without merit. After all raw capitalism is about survival of the fittest where only the strong survive and the weak perish, if it were not for the philanthropy of others. I think the great thing about reading Adam Smith is how seriously misunderstood his works are. For example, people cite Adam Smith as one who believed in no social safety net, taxes and zero regulation. This is simply not true and if you think it is you should go back and read the book that you clearly have not read.
- ekianjo 14y agoAdam Smith is not the only person to read to understand Capitalism. No need to be pretentious. > An obtuse comment considering he's a leading scientist. So what? Since when being recognized in one field makes you competent in another? A widespread fallacy.
- hackerboos 14y agoYou were being obtuse because since his opinion differs from yours he must have had problems 'understanding' capitalism.
- ekianjo 14y agoYeah, because Capitalism is a system that has put millions/billions of people out of misery and starvation throughout the world (and you can see that, proven again when Communist China started to inject some capitalism in its economy in the 1990s), and summarizing is as simply "greed" just does not do much justice to it.
- baby 14y agoWhat is really awesome is that all those books are offered for free! Anyone has a better format to read "Newton's Principia : the mathematical principles of natural philosophy" ?
- Someone 14y agoTo start with, I think he should have linked to http://archive.org/details/newtonspmathema00newtrich http://archive.org/details/newtonspmathema00newtrich, not to their .txt link. It also is on http://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_P.html?id=Tm0FAAAAQAAJ&redir_esc=y http://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Mathematical_Principl..., but 'not yet available in your country' for me, so I don't know whether that is good. There is a free ePub on the iBookstore in the original Latin (also a paid one in English) If you read anything by Newton, I would advise Opticks, by the way, to learn that, even for geniuses, it is all hard work to get there (TL;DR version: he did not order his lenses on the Internet and needed the sun (in England) for lots of his experiments)
- derrida 14y agoI've read some of those books cover to cover (Art of War, the Prince) & other's I've glazed over because they were, well, boring & laborious & I don't believe anybody should be recommending them as things to read for enjoyment (Origin of the Species or The Bible, for instance). So here's my list of 8 for things that you'll probably never finish, but extract huge value from anyway. -Richard Feynman Lectures on Physics - religion -Donald Knuth Art of Computer Programming - I can fuck around with manuals, other text books, but when I come to read the explanation of a particular concept in TAOCP, I always realise "this is the path of least resistance to understanding X" & then that scares me, because there is so much to know & it's really hard to understand anything well. -William James The Varieties of Religious Experience For those that deny the possibility of spiritual experience within a naturalistic world view. A lot of atheism that is public today misses empathy with religious experience. -Martin Gardner's articles -Douglas Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach & Le Ton Beau De Marot - for those that enjoy spending all day thinking about logic & languages (hello programmers) these two books are romantic pulp - you know you shouldn't be reading them, they are so hopelessly impractical, lofty & philosophical. -Friedrich Nietzsche - The Gay Science - because it will infuriate people who are adverse to the sort of thinking you see in the humanities and they deserve to be enraged by this book. If you have an ethical system, think you can tell good from bad, right from wrong, read this book. Acid for the normative. - C.S.Peirce's notebooks - This hasn't been published in its completeness but deserves to be (I just hope saying this here doesn't mean I'll never be able to find a copy of some of his notes again). Another tragic of history that has been looked over in much the same manner as Tesla. Peirce figured out electrical gates could be used to implement boolean logic 50 years before Shannon, axiomatised the natural numbers before Peano, made the distinction of cardinal and ordinal before Cantor & nobody knows who he fucking was because he was a chemist. What else is in his books that we haven't managed to recognise the significance of yet?
- abootstrapper 14y agoI'm ok with this list of books, but the whole "you should read this to learn X point of view" is obnoxious. How about I read it and derive my own point of view from the book!
- russellallen 14y agoYou too should read $classic-tome to learn $trite-lesson.
- tossacct 14y agoJust because it is trite doesn't mean it is not right: because even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
- JulianWasTaken 14y agoBlogspam. I agree with most of the comments that this was a rather lackluster list, but the actual link is http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c38vowu?context=2 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degras...
- aurelianito 14y agoThis "blogspam" has the added value of links pointing to ebooks, so you are able to read them now. I prefer it to the original reddit comment.
- hexonexxon 14y agoshould've made it 9 books Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Ralston Saul a critical essay of how the age of reason was distorted to trample all over modern democracy
- jacques_chester 14y agoWhich sounds a bit like a riff off Hayek, who riffed off a long and illustrious line of skeptics of rationalism.
- kyro 14y agoAgree with other comments here. I've flipped through Wealth of Nations, Origin of Species and others and couldn't keep my focus tethered down. So let me ask you this: What are the top 10 essential reads of today for helping one develop a critical mind and a better understanding of the world around them?
- martinced 14y agoThis thread is filled with the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy and it's sad, so I can see where your question is coming from. I personally like to read books from people who predicted things before they happened and try to understand their mindset. Understanding finance... One may not like its writing style but Nicolas Nassim Taleb's "The Black Swan" helped me understand how finance was indeed the crumbs of capitalism that Buffet hates. Understanding economy... Another one I love --but it's in french-- is Charles Gave. That economist (definitely not mainstream) did write, in 1999, that the introduction of the common currency in Europe (the Euro) would lead to: "Too many houses in Spain, too many industries in Germany and too many public servants in France. That Spain was going to state default, followed by Greece". So he got the order wrong about Greece (which already default a first time and which is going to default again) and Spain, but besides that he was spot on. And you cannot say: "If you take enough economists, one of them is going to predict the future". Because here the prediction was way too precise to be sheer luck. He did explain the precise mechanisms that would lead to that situation (and he did bet his money accordingly and made millions). Basically after reading that you understand how wrong the Keynes school is and how Krugman totally lost it (yeah, let's mill a $1 trillion coin... Why not mill 26 of them and be done with the public debt right!?). There are going to be more state defaults in Europe (it's not even opened up for debate), starting with Greece which is going to default again. There's going to either severe inflation or partial state default in the U.S. too unless public spendings are dramatically brought down. No way out. I'd suggest not to read from people explaining the past or the present. It's not interesting. It's more interesting to take out older writings explaining what's going to happen in the future and why. People able to do that are the most critical thinkers ever. These writers often use an aggressive tone but you have to bear with it: these people are right and they know it and hardly anyone is listening to them.
- stcredzero 14y ago> most of the time humans are Yahoos. A human's relationship to being a yahoo is like a car's relationship to running off the road. Right now, deliberate steering is required. Also, it seems that one day soon, this will be automated.
- Tichy 14y agoApart from what others said, I'd like to point art that The Art Of War is not really about killing, it clearly states that the best victory is the one won without fighting.
- qznc 14y agoI agree. Likewise, I learned very different lessons from those books. For example, Machiavelli's Prince is a set of anecdotes on how to acquire power. If that is for good or evil, is up for interpretation [0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_The_Prince_as_political_satire_or_as_deceit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_Th...
- Allower 14y agoNeil DeGrasse Tyson has got to be the most artificial 'Smart' guy the media had put forward since Carl Sagan.
- Allower 14y agoI should continue, Both Carl and Neil are delightful men, they inspire an interest in the world that surrounds us in a way that few are capable of. I simply see a degrade in their value once they attempt to push one dogma or another.
- noblethrasher 14y agoBasically he's saying that everyone should have a history minor.
- noblethrasher 14y agoThe downvoting is suprising. I have a history degree and that list more or less represents some of the required reading for an undergraduate history program.
- dbecker 14y agoThe vast majority of comments here (and, I would guess most non-commenting readers) think this list is pretentious BS. Though it's a tangent: I'm curious about why it has received this many upvotes?
- unalone 14y agoHacker News's upvote-only policy for stories means that unless a story is flagged so much mods remove it, it will hit the front page so long as a significant minority of users thinks it's interesting. There's no "critical" crowd control of users saying "No, this isn't worth my time, back down you go." Sometimes this is good, and allows controversial opinions to hit the top of HN; other times we get the Reddit effect, and short, fluffy pieces rise to the top instead of longer posts that might take longer to read, assess, and upvote. I find the set-up kind of ironic, because when I first joined HN I was a college freshman who posted some fairly fluff things I'd written in the hopes that people would read it and get to know me. Now that I'm working on more interesting things, I don't think I'll be bothering to submit them here, simply because I doubt they're quite easy enough to receive votes. All in all, I don't think it's that the system's broken – like I said, this allows controversial pieces to still hit the top – but it's a downside to the way HN handles voting that cannot easily be avoided.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- yk 14y agoThis is a horribly list to read, albeit a very nice list to put in to the front of a book shelf. Most importantly, if one reads only one book on any given subject, then one will only hear of one point of view. A problem that is made worse by selecting classics, which are usually written to make a point instead of summarizing the broader debate. The most obvious example from this list is probably Origin of Species, a work where Darwin did not talk about the evolution of man, because he did not wanted to be drawn into a theological debate. Additionally the classics carry context, which may or may not be obvious. Here the most obvious example from the list is Adam Smith, who did not write about abstract global markets, as the term is used today, but he did write about a collection of market stalls. Similarly, his thought about government and regulation was informed by his times, the first edition appeared in 1776, the same year as the declaration of independence and thirteen years before the French revolution. So Adam Smith did never write about a modern nation, with formal representation and a process for the transition of power, but he did write about a late feudal society, in which the political power was held by an unchecked former warrior elite. [ The above does not mean that I am against reading classics, in fact quite the opposite. The problem is just, that trying to get an important idea x, then you should probably read "A modern introduction to x," not the classical book where it first appeared, in an convoluted way embedded into some discussion at that time.]