Literate Scientist

This is an encyclopedic work I bought in a local book shop and finally finished reading today. It took me a year to read from cover to cover and pages were falling out of the glue but I continued to read. Highly recommended for education and another view on human history. The review of Freud was enlightening to me because I didn’t know about the recent scholarship criticizing his work. In fact, I so liked this book that just bought it again in a hardcover version from Folio Society and start rereading it again soon.

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The second encyclopedic book seems was written before the previous one but looks like the logical sequel to it. I’m starting reading it next week.

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

It is interesting to compare core school subjects in 70-80s USSR with those in UK and Ireland. I certainly missed any religious education and many art-isms. Physical education (games) was also different except football and climbing a rope. So I bought this book in a local bookshop a few months ago to align my basic school education and finished reading yesterday while waiting in a queue in Irish visa office near Dublin O’Connell Bridge:

Homework for Grown-ups: Everything You Learnt at School…and Promptly Forgot

It was also useful for me to learn some English words from basic biology, classics and geography.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

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 -

OpenTask plans to publish the extended and edited version of this blog as a book:

Literate Scientists and Their Books: An Independent Guide to Understanding Reality (ISBN: 978-1906717520)

- 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 -

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 -

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 -

This one finished reading yesterday. I don’t want to repeat my review you can find here:

Review of Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Just want to add that I carried it in my pocket during flight that evening and perhaps avoided black swans. Knowledge-driven superstition…

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -