Literate Scientist

If you ask me to recommend the only one semi-popular book about modern physics that has everything in it and explaining all necessary mathematics too I would not hesitate to point to Roger Penrose’s book:

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

It is not a light read and requires some mathematical maturity. It has more than 1,100 pages and my first attempt to read it in 2005 when I bought a hardcover edition lasted until the page 160. Since then I read many other popular and semi-popular physics and math books and now feel more confident. I started reading it again last week from the first page before tackling with The Anthropic Cosmological Principle book which is heavy on general relativity and it reads very well now. Therefore I would recommend not to give up reading this book and even read it couple of times to thoroughly understand various mathematical ideas and their connection with physics. It is well worth it if you are keen to understand modern science. There is no other science book with the same breadth and depth covering both physics and mathematics. It looks like it springed various smaller books like The Comprehensible Cosmos I read earlier.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

If you want to learn about standard model of particle physics and understand associated concepts including QED and QCD, Lie groups and gauge theory this popular book is down to the facts and non-speculative: it even barely mentions string theory.

Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics

I read it in succession to another similar great popular book that uses a bit more math but in addition lucidly explains special relativity that was only briefly touched in Deep Down Things book:

The Great Design: Particles, Fields, and Creation

I read both books last year and now I’m reading Roger Penrose’s book The Road to Reality and review it as soon as I finish.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

When mapping one science domain to another and borrowing terminology even metaphorically one rule to follow is to provide justification. This is very important otherwise people will laugh once they recognize that terminology was just thrown without any explanation or connection. For me this book was very important reading because I also mapped some computer science and engineering technology terminology to the domain of project management. However I provided some sort of justification to my relief.

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This one I discovered last year and just finished reading. Interesting collection of articles written in the late 70’s and early 80’s about application of mathematics. My favourite were two articles about statistics and two articles about Husserl. The article about Kant biography was nice as well.

Discrete Thoughts

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Links to these two books can be found on my management blog:

Management Bit and Tip 0×80

The first book (150 pages) explains the main theme of the second (1,300 pages) that establishment shapes our world. I read the first book completely and it had some revelations for me, for example, that establishment supported communism in US after WWII, that McCarthy was a hero, and that Cuban Crisis was created by the demand from grassroots movement. Certainly it is good to know about different views. I started reading the second book and it differs from other history books, for example, written by J. M. Roberts, as it puts some theory and patterns behind the narrative.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

I was always fascinated with String Theory without knowing what it was all about except the fact that in early 90s one physics professor told me that there exists the so called String Theory where a mathematical apparatus changes every 6 months… Since then I always wanted to read about that theory and in 2002 I bought and started reading The Elegant Universe book and then bought the book suitable for undergraduates called A First Course in String Theory. This learning adventure was suddenly interrupted with the arrival of two books which I finished reading last year and which opened my eyes and reminded me again that science is full of politics, influence and power games:

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory And the Search for Unity in Physical Law

The next one is offered with great discount that I think was given the let many people to know about troubles in fundamental physical sciences:

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next

Since then I read other books about modern physics and science in general and I think I would re-read these two books because I have better background now in order to judge what authors say or complain about.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Very good book to learn about mathematical logic, distinction between syntax and semantics, different interpretations of formal languages and how this leads to various different non-classical logics. It will deepen your understanding of mathematics if you studied or encountered only classical propositional and predicate logic and want to learn more about fuzzy logic, for example, among many others. All necessary prerequisites are covered in the first 230 pages of this 500 page book including informal set theory and topology. I read most of this book couple of years ago and want to re-read it soon.

Classical and Nonclassical Logics: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Propositions

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -