Just so everyone knows, if I get a little quieter on ye olde blog it’s because I am trés busy these days! I’m still doing research on my Darwinism project (which, FWIW, now sports a bibliography of 64 works, and it’s only about 1/8 finished–although I doubt I will add 8 times more bibliographical sources). Additionally, I’m doing some more work on my factor field, which involved me having to Google the law of cosines (hey, gimme a break, it’s been 12 years since I had trigonometry, and 9 years since I took any kind of math class) amongst other mathematical functions. And, to top it all off, at work we are currently working on our upgrade to the main program (this is the upgrade that was supposed to be done two years ago but which was rescheduled to February then June then September then the next February then July then the end of August, when it finally started!), which means that I get to do my normal job plus running everything through a test system to see if the upgrade works (which means I do lots of things twice)…and to finish it all up (for the work section, anyway), I’m training our new person who just started today! I feel a bit like Kasperov playing 30 simultaneous chess matches at one time, ya know (this is Bush’s fault). And, of course, I am also still working on my “What Logic Requries Us To Believe About The Existence of God” series, as well as responding to a few people who had questions about previous sections and/or who wished to debate other issues. So, all in all, quite a full schedule!
There is one benefit to my having broken my bike. I get to read a lot on the bus, so at least the research portion continues forth :-D
Anyway, one last thing. Over on Triablogue, an anonymous commentor stated that due to my posts about Brian Greene’s works, s/he purchased his books and wanted to know what order to read them in, as well as other recommendations for books to read. Since I figure that was a good question, I’ll answer it here too (I already posted something on T-Blog earlier):
I would recommend you read them in the order they were written (”Elegant Universe” and then “Fabric of the Cosmos”). Parts of Fabric actually refer you back to Elegant Universe anyway, so you’d do best to read them in that order.
As for science writings (with a quantum focus–which is really the basis for most modern physics cosmologies), I’d recommend, it really depends on your level already. If you are just starting to examine Relativity, I would recommend The Einstein Paradox by Colin Bruce. This is technically a work of fiction, but in reality it goes through a basic view of quantum mechanics with Sherlock Holmes solving various cases. Another intro-book would be Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick (who also wrote Chaos, which is another great book). That will introduce you not only to Feynman, but to many of the other players that helped found modern quantum thought. For instance, you’ll learn about Freeman Dyson and Murray Gell-Mann, etc. And if you want to go more indepth, I would suggest you pick up books by those authors too.
Note that I do not endorse all the views of these people, of course. But they should get you started.
To this list I could also include Relativity by Einstein (might as well get it straight from the horse’s mouth) and In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat by John Gribbin. If you want a good history of science, I like Ferris’s Coming of Age in the Milky Way as well as Crump’s A Brief History of Science and Butterfield’s The Origins of Modern Science (in that order). If you want physics specifically, I have so far really enjoyed Gibilisco’s Physics Demystified but have yet to finish it. I’ve read enough to recommend it though :-)
Again, there is much I disagree with in each of these works, but they also do a great job of introducing the concepts involved.
