Literate Scientist

I bought this book last year after my family asked me a few questions about whether it was safe to buy and eat chicken and I decided to educate myself on this subject. However only this month I had a chance to start reading it. Very informative on avian influenza viruses, how they interact and spread. I liked the history of the search for 1918 flu pandemic virus. I’ve read almost 60 pages so far but one advise I got is not to wash meat before cooking: I’ve done the opposite so far. Keep reading for the moment.

Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Robert Rosen mentioned this book in his Essays on Life Itself which I’m reading now (Chapter 9, Genericity as Information) and I immediately ordered it. It arrived today and a brief glance at it convinced me that I shall start reading it now as it might give some additional insight into Rosennean Complexity. I hope to write more about this book and ideas it will have brought to me when I finish reading it.

Structural Stability And Morphogenesis (Advanced Books Classics)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This is my second Rosen’s book and I started reading on 1st of September, 2008, a year after I read “Life Itself”. Essays were written after the latter book and were intended to clarify it. Therefore if you are about to start reading Rosen’s works it is probably better to read essays first. I’m almost halfway through it and particularly like the discussion about mimesis, its roots and history. This is highly recommended book to read and if you were trained in chemistry, physics and computer science like myself you would find revelations on every page and would never look at modern science with the same eyes again.

Essays on Life Itself

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

I remember from my school days during Soviet Union times about pollution in dying capitalist societies. I came upon this book a few years ago while preparing for my environmental study assignment in University. Being curious about diverse reviews I bought this book. I started reading it a few months ago during my lunch time and I would recommend it to everyone to learn how to do statistics right.

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Thorough understanding of evolutionary theory and its applications to other disciplines was one of omissions in my education besides vague recollection of what I learnt at school 20-25 years ago. I actually remember pictures from Darwin’s books I looked at when I was a child I bought this book and started reading after seeing many references to it in Breaking the Spell from the same author. Currently I’m halfway through it. As far as I understand Dennett’s view of evolution is the computational one. Anyway there is much to learn from this book.

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

After reading The Hundred-Year Lie I proceeded to a more balanced book:

Is it Safe to Eat?: Enjoy Eating and Minimize Food Risks

The author advocates risk vs. benefit approach throughout the book and now I started to apply the definition of risk as “hazard * exposure” to other areas as well. Explanation about how and why GM food was developed as well as the story of BSE (mad cow disease) was very interesting because I knew very little about them. I studied chemistry in university and liked that the author included organic formulae to illustrate important chemicals and their mechanisms, for example, estrogen disrupters.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This is the very important book that warns about synergy between different chemicals that enter our bodies. It also shows the failure of reductionism in pharmacology and mainstream medicine and the danger of the so called synthetic paradigm. The book depicts various food and drug related fallacies. Highly recommended for reading and not to be paranoid but at least to be informed. At the time of this writing I’ve have finished 183 pages out of 257 pages of the main text. This is my lunch time reading these days :-)

The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

After reading Rosen’s book “Life Itself” I became very interested in non-reductionist thinking and found the book from Alwyn C. Scott. It is an excellent overview and the last 30 page chapter “Reductionism in Life” is worth the whole book:

• Newton’s Legacy
  • The Reductive Program
  • Supervenience and Physicalism
  • Practical Considerations
• Objections to Reductionism
  • Googols of Possibilities
  • Convoluted Causality
  • Nonlinear Causality
  • Time’s Arrow
  • Downward Causation
  • Open Systems
  • Closed Causal Loops and Open Networks
• Theories of Life
  • Artificial Life vs. Autopoiesis
  • Relational Biology
  • Mechanisms
  • Complex Systems and Chaotic Emergence
  • What Is Life?

The Nonlinear Universe: Chaos, Emergence, Life (The Frontiers Collection)

Highly recommended especially if you were trained as a physicist or a chemist like myself.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -