Friday, February 13th, 2009
I encounter plenty of references to theology and its terminology in many books. My atheistic school education in communist Russia resulted in the lack of any knowledge of religion that I noted already in the review of Breaking the Spell book. A few months ago I saw this book in a local bookshop and immediately bought it to widen my views on religious and theological matters. I’ve read it and it explained lots of terminology very clearly. Highly recommended. One cautious note though: it only surveys key ideas and theologians from Western theology. For Orthodox worldview you need to look elsewhere.
A Brief History of Theology: From the New Testament to Feminist Theology


- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -
Posted in Biographies, Ethics, From Cover To Cover, History, Philosophy, Reading List 2009, Religion, Reviewed on Amazon, Theology | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
These two volumes I bought a few years ago, started reading the first chapter and then other books got reading priority, for example, Rosen’s “Life Itself”. A few weeks ago I picked up the first volume again and started reading from the beginning. I’m was really amazed how I understand it better after reading Rosen’s books. These volumes are highly recommended to learn about models of reality and mathematical modeling itself. The first chapter that discusses the relationship of models to observation is awesome. The book requires an undergraduate engineering level of mathematics: linear algebra, calculus and a bit of mathematical analysis. You will also learn about catastrophe-theoretic models, chaos, cellular automata, geometry of human affairs, patterns, fractals, and many other things. There is even a discussion about controversies in catastrophe theory involving Rene Thom. I think the first volume of this book set is a prerequisite reading before starting with classic Structural Stability And Morphogenesis.
Reality Rules, 2 Volume Set


- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -
Posted in Biology, Catastrophe Theory, Causality, Chaos, Chemistry, Complexity, Computer Science, Ecology, Economics, Evolution, Life, Logic, Mathematical Modeling, Mathematics, Nonlinear Science, Philosophy, Physics, Politics, Reading List 2009, Semantics, Social Sciences | No Comments »