Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book? Ideally, I'm looking at something similar to Russell's History of Philosophy but for science. I am studying the history of philosophy right now, and I'd like to complement the curriculum with some reading on the history of science. |
- The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge
- How Innovation Works
- Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
Full bibliography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_J._Bowler
Iwan Rhys Morus also has some good books on Faraday/Tesla and his own illustrated history of science and way back to his "Bodies/Machines" from 2002.
They take a general view that is cynical of the "revoluions" fallacy in historigraphical approaches to the history of sciences.
This book had the large effect on my way of thinking of any book I've read in at least the last decade.
This set of blog posts that turned into a book is a great history of the underlying technologies that ultimately led to the computer, from the discovery of electricity onward. It's not a complete history of science, as it focuses on just one area, but it really brings out the nature of the interaction of discovery and practical development within their social context. I found it fascinating and enlightening.
I especially liked the battle to sequence and publish the human genome before Celera could do the same and slap down a patent on it. The story of the development of Elite is also a fun insight into the challenges of programming in the 80s where every byte mattered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_This_Thing_Called_Scie...
For me, the absolute best written is Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes. It covers a large swatch of British Science from Newton to Maxwell.
Other good reads are
1. The Invention of Science by Wootton (which is very academic in style),
2. The Wizard and the Prophet by Mann
3. Galileo At Work by Drake
4. Newton by Gleik.
Marcia bartusiak
Interesting (great!) read on the history of (fairly recent) astronomy. Ties in with physics
Mostly physics but pretty amazing.
This was a nice short read! I’d definite recommend it.
https://blog.opensyllabus.org/about-the-open-syllabus-projec...
Timothy Ferris (not that one) and John gribbin have also trod this area.
For physics the field is so wide it's hard to pinpoint where to start. On Quantum Physics Jim Baggot's "The meaning of Quantum Theory" is the best introductory text by any measure for "mediacore academics" like myself. It tries to hand hold the reader through the firs steps of the historical evolution of quantum theory and why quantum theory is so weird as it is - as a physics MSc I wish I had read this book two decades ago :)
For "light" approach the newer "Cosmos" series is pretty damn good in highlighting some of the key scientific work of past centuries. Don't let the cute animation fool you, this is deep, deep stuff and the producers should be regarded among the top science communicators. I've never seen a better "generalist" explanation for Faraday's and Maxwell's work, the discovery Cepheid variable stars and lots of other stuff.
There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Inventors_Hal...
[1]. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Universe/Eo5xpO83Yp...
I loved this one because it covers a lot of ground and includes a lot of fascinating detail around the human factors and personalities involved.
[0] https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Tyranny+of+Science-p-9780745...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Philosophers
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2071784.God_s_Clockmaker
The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science by Seb Faulk was recently (2020) published and won a few awards (lots of interview on YouTube):
* https://twitter.com/Seb_Falk
Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution and The Rise of Early Modern Science by Toby Huff:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff
If you're doing philosophy and science, you may be curious about law: see The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession by Brundage:
1. A Brief History of Science with Stephen Wolfram - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram/sets/a-brief-history-o...
2. A Very Brief History of Mathematics - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram/a-very-brief-history-o...
3. An Informal History of Physics - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram/history-of-physics
There maybe more here - https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Galileo’s Pendulum: From the Rhythm of Time to the Making of Matter by Roger G Newton
From Clockwork to Crapshoot: A History of Physics by Roger G Newton
Connections by James Burke
The Day The Universe Changed by James Burke
re Math: Everything and More A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace
Koyre is basically the orginator of the history of science. This was his popularization.
Einstein & Infeld's Evolution of Physics
Picks up where Koyre leaves off.
I’m a professional HN lurker but I can’t not contribute this one. The book all scientists should have read and would love, but haven’t heard about…
“The editor of the internationally acclaimed Eyewitness to History now charts the development of modern science. In this first anthology of its kind, Carey chooses accounts by scientists themselves--astronomers and physicists, biologists, chemists, psychologists--that are both arrestingly written and clear. Contributors include Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Lewis Thomas, Rachel Carson, Sigmund Freud, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, and scores of others.”
Hope you enjoy!
This is specific to "Information, communication, and information theory." but it's still quite broad and a great read.
http://opensyllabusproject.org/
Caveat: I haven't used it in awhile and I don't remember how the search tools work.
For Biology I really enjoyed “A Brief History of Creation”, high level overview of all of the advances to understand what we are made of.
“Eight Day of Creation” is supposed to be incredible but it’s the size of the text book so I keep reaching past it on my desk
> "Ivar Ekeland takes readers on a journey through scientific attempts to envision the best of all possible worlds. He begins with the French mathematician Maupertuis, whose least action principle [...] was a pivotal breakthrough in science, because it was the first expression of the concept of optimization, or the design of systems that are the most efficient or functional. [...] Tracing the profound impact of optimization and the unexpected ways in which it has influenced the study of mathematics, biology, economics, and even politics, Ekeland reveals throughout how the idea of optimization has driven some of our greatest intellectual breakthroughs..."
Very readable style, and a lot of historical context around the names of scientists I've only heard in passing.
* Bill Bryson's A brief history of Everything
* Siddartha Mukherjee's The Gene: an intimate history and The Emperor of All Maladies (on Cancer)
* Carl Zimmer's Evolution, the triumph of an idea
* James Gleick's Information, A History, a Theory, a Flood
* Walter Isacson's Codebreaker about the creation of the CRISPR -CAS9 gene editing technology
- Seven Brief Lessons in Physics by Carlo Rovelli is a brief, enjoyable, and great read. This book is good for both layperson and experts.
- Albert Einstein is Einstein's biography by Walter Isaacson. Really nice book.
- The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick (author of Chaos and The Information) is another great biography. This biography shows the evolution of his science as well as evolution of his person and thoughts. Great book. Background in Physics will be very helpful if you want to read this one.
- The Mathematical Experience David, Hersh is a very succinct and pleasant book on the history of Maths. Will recommend.
- Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges is a good mathematician's biography. I have not finished it, but fully intend to.
- I have just read some of The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattyacharya is a biography of John von Neumann. It already seems very good and I plan to read through the end.
- The Annotated Turing deals a lot with history and is a read of a lifetime.
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- I have not read A Mind at Work yet. It is a biography of Claude Shanon. I would recommend you to check it out.
- Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind is also recommended highly. I plan to read it.
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I have recently watched a BBC Documentary that I thoroughly liked. One of its themes that had striken me was the change of science from fully deterministic to probabilistic. It's an extremely important paradigm shift for all of science.
The name is Dangerous Knowledge (2007).
The people covered are- Cantor, Boltzmann, Godel, and Turing.
> Postmodernists interpreted Thomas Kuhn's ideas about scientific paradigms to mean that scientific theories are social constructs, and philosophers like Paul Feyerabend argued that other, non-realist forms of knowledge production were better suited to serve people's personal and spiritual needs.
> Kuhn described the development of scientific knowledge not as a linear increase in truth and understanding, but as a series of periodic revolutions which overturned the old scientific order and replaced it with new orders (what he called "paradigms"). Kuhn attributed much of this process to the interactions and strategies of the human participants in science rather than its own innate logical structure.
> Some interpreted Kuhn's ideas to mean that scientific theories were, either wholly or in part, social constructs, which many interpreted as diminishing the claim of science to representing objective reality
“Fanboys going all in on an idea and applying it to everything” kinda thing.
It actually goes into some detail about why the Higgs boson is important, it just says "it hasn't been found yet". If you fill in the epilogue of "the Higgs boson was found in 2012" yourself, those pages are still consistent, correct and useful.
It would really be out of date if the Higgs had been disproved, as it would have two pages of, essentially, a branch predictor failure.