Literate Scientist

When stumbled upon this book on Amazon earlier this month when I was looking at the list of recently published science books I recalled how creationists and proponents of intelligent design are instantly dismissed in many science books that never discuss them in any details. In the description this book promised to review various approaches and even to suggest the testable model. The latter intrigued me and without fear of being accused as a non-scientist I bought it. Just started reading and if I find any flaw I would revise this post accordingly. So far it provides description, motivation and origin of many creationist / IDM versions. Should be read even if you are a confirmed scientist.

More Than a Theory: Revealing a Testable Model for Creation

I’m a founder of Memory Religion so I have nothing to loose after reading this book. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Having read Darwin’s Dangerous Idea book I was looking for more comprehensive book and a few months ago I stumbled across this 1,000 page volume in one of bookshops in the centre of Dublin:

Evolution: The First Four Billion Years

After browsing it for 10 seconds I bought it without any hesitation. Richly illustrated, its structure reminds me another excellent volume composed from review articles, short encyclopedic and biographic entries: The Princeton Companion to Mathematics.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This book I bought some time ago to learn more about biology. I’ve just finished it and found it very good explaining what the science is, what is the difference between physical and life sciences. It also provides great overview of the subject, its history and philosophy, including taxonomy, evolution, ecology and ethics. I now adapt some ideas from biology to the science of memory dump analysis. There are some structural book organization deficiencies that would have made the book better. There are notes and the end of the book but I would prefer to have them to be footnotes. Also there is a very useful glossary at the end of the book too but for the beginner in any science it is useful to have definitions in footnotes ready to read when they are first encountered.

This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

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 -

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 bought this book (as used, it seems no longer available in print) after reading Fashionable Nonsense which refers to it. Highly recommended to anyone starting to write on non-technical subjects to avoid inventing new jargon and repeat obvious as well as to anyone trying to get a (self-)education in social sciences like me and be suspicious to excessive verbiage. I like his formula V = A / K - 1, where V is the amount of produced verbiage, A is the amount of ambition and K is the amount of knowledge on the subject and related disciplines.

Social Sciences as Sorcery

I don’t have its cover jacket with me today but I’ll take a picture of it later and put here.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

I admit Semiotics is the big gap in my education which mostly lies in natural and computer sciences. I know less about social sciences and try to fill various gaps. The reason why I came upon this discipline is that I’m interested in signs and their interpretations, especially their relation to various structures. I started reading this book in September and almost read 1/3rd of it during my flight to Russia via Zurich.

Semiotics: The Basics

As a by-product of reading I was able to provide a kind of theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of bugtations:

Bugtations: a semiotic approach

- 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 -