2015-11-01 Materials that survived my move to Albuquerque, in no particular order. [I lost nearly all my thousands of books in the move !!]
I know, I need to work on this quick and dirty list. - elaborate and organize. It’s on my “to do” list - somewhere.
Dan Dennett, author of "Mind’s I”, Ted and Youtube talks, etc. pointed out to me that I have none of his books here. So it needs work.
BTW Dan has a new book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, coming out in Feb 2017 that agrees with my material basis for the mind.
2017-08-04 At least I added a link to Dan’s new book, I’ll add more links and comments later.
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I promise a section for non technical writings later, Meanwhile two of my favorite books are:
Thomas Kellys’ A Testament of Devotion,
a quaker worldview of the Light Within and one of my favorites for that worldview
or Henri Nouwen’s Way of the Heart,
observations of a seeker in the modern world. Lessons from the Desert Fathers and Mothers
Both highly recommended, but available only in paperback
... more later ...
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meanwhile: Technical and Scientific Books and Articles:
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The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge by William Poundstone - uses cellular automata to explain some concepts of physics
The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazier - the 1890-1922 classic on comparative religion
Brains And Computers by Tuck Newport - short quantitative comparison
Higher Intelligence: How to Create a Functional Artificial Brain by Peter A J van der Made - AI techniques
The Omega Upgrade - A Short Story by Raima Larter - fiction about society changes
Sapiens: A Real History of Humankind by Yuval Nora Harari - human evolution
An Anatomy of Thought: The Origin and Machinery of the Mind by Ian Glynn - multidisciplinary tour of workings of the brain
Think Complexity: Complexity Science and Computational Modeling by Allen B. Downey - tour of complexity algorithms using python
The Amoeba in the Room: Lives of the Microbes by Nicholas P. Money - folksy microbiology how microbes are what’s important
Myths to Live By (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell Book 1)
The Power of Myth
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
— all by Joseph Campbell - all must reads by Campbell
Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself by Adam Rutherford - from evolution to synthetic biology
The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future by Martin Ford - social effects of accelerating computer technology
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert - the next coming mass extinction
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates by Howard Bloom - how does an inanimate universe generate stunning new forms and unbelievable new powers without a Creator?
Cybernetics: Second Edition: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Weiner - the classic from 1948 with 2013 addendum
The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon - the classic information theory paper
The Meaning of Human Existence by E O Wilson - origin and destiny of humans by famous biologist also see:
Life on Earth - a survey of biology
Pale Blue Dot
Cosmos
Dragons of Eden
Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Contact
— etc by Carl Sagan
A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram - large scale exploration of cellular automata
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter - the classic exploration of cognitive science
Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler - the now classic tome about nanotechnology and society
Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee - many expect thousands of civilizations to be discovered - this book reaches the opposite conclusion
River Out Of Eden by Richard Dawkins - explanation of genetic evolution
The Information: A History, a Theory, s Flood by James Gleick - into to information for the public,but good reading
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ALSO see these classics:
Bruner: A Study of Thinking, 1956, perhaps dated now, but a good starting point.
Pinker: The Language Instinct
the blank slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
How the Mind Works
Chomsky: New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind
The Architecture of Language
Piaget: Developmental Psychology
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The following come from the thegreatcourses.com - a great site.
The Art of Critical Decision Making by Michael A. Roberto
Myth in Human History by Grant L. Voth
Sciience Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It by Steven Goldman
The Art of Public Speaking: Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History by John R. Hale
How Music and Mathematics Relate by David Kung
Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines by Patrick Grimm
Fundamentals of Photography by Joel Sartore
The Art of Storytelling by Hannah B. Harvey
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OTHER BOOKS AND URLS:
The Evolution of the Eukaryotes -
- http://www.world-builders.org/lessons/less/les4/eukaryotes.html
The Evolution of the Earliest Cells
- https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/diakelly/150/cells.pdf
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