I’ve really no idea how much time I will have to read, but I put together a reading list for the journey, compiled from the brilliant book by Tuck Newport, Reinventing the Liberal Arts and Unbundling Higher Education. Five dollars for Mr. Newport’s book, another $300 or so in books and you can get a brilliant education. The older i’ve gotten, the more I value the Liberal Arts. I see more and more knowledge in the world, but seemingly less and less wisdom. In an effort to fill the holes in my formal engineering and business education, I’ve loaded up my Kindle along with a few physical book purchases. Mr. Newport references other works, but the below are the ones that caught my attention. For your consideration, and for me to keep track:
Physics
- Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel, Rebecca Goldstein
- Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, David Lindley
- What is Life, Erwin Schrodinger
- At Home in the Universe, Stuart Kaufman
Biology
- Origins of Life, Freeman Dyson
- The Origins of Order, Stuart Kaufman
- Mendel’s Demon: Gene Justice and the Complexity of Life, Mark Ridley
- Quantum Evolution, Johnjoe McFadden
- The Humans Who Went Extinct, Clive Finlayson
- In Defense of Self: How the Immune System Really Works, William Clark
Consciousness
- i of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self, Rodolfo Llinas
- Consciousness and the Univers, Roger Penrose, Henry Stapp, Don Page, Michael Nauenberg, Fred Kuttner, Walter Christensen…
- A Universe of Consciousness, Edelman and Tononi
- The Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann
History
- Memory and the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel
- Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, Christopher Dawson
- From Enlightenment to Revolution, Eric Voegelin
- Law and Revolution, The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Harold Berman
- Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Modris Eksteins
Ethics and Politics
- The Abolition of Man, S. Lewis
- A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Thomas Sowell
- A Theory of Justice, John Rawls
- Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick
- The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention, Robert Temple
- Propaganda, the Formation of Men’s Attitudes, Jacques Ellul
I have a feeling that most of these will remain undigested upon my return. We shall see.
sparrow 