Truth in Mathematics Clarendon Press ISBN: 019851476X Mentioned in Excluded muddle Co-author Oliveri,G A variety of papers on the question of mathematical truth. Mathematical of course, but readable by the non-specialist.

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Descartes' Error Vintage, 1994 ISBN: 9780099501640 We tend to distinguish between reason and emotion. Even those who think reason should be a slave to the passions imply that they are different ways of thinking. Antonio Damasio doesn't agree. In Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain he argues that emotion is in fact a central part of rational thought. Continued..

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Teleportation Wiley, 2005 ISBN: 0471470953 Most people will be familiar with the idea of teleportation from science fiction films, an such a device would be extremely useful but how likely is it that it will ever be created? In Teleportation: The impossible leap David Darling explains some of the discoveries which may eventually lead to a teleportation device. The book starts with a chapter looking at teleportation in science fiction, and then introduces the reader to the physics of teleportation and in particular to quantum theory. Darling then describes how recent experiments have brought quantum teleportation closer to reality. Continued..

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Gravity's arc Wiley, 2006 ISBN: 0471719897 The ancients thought they understood gravity. Things had a tendency to fall down and that was that. But as time goes on this pervasive force seems to become more and more mysterious. In 'Gravity's arc' David Darling traces our understanding of gravity from the earliest times right up to 2006. The book is written in an easy to read style and requires no prior knowledge on the part of the reader. I've a feeling that more knowledgable readers might find it a bit pedestrian. Some books are written so as to be interesting to all levels of reader, but I'm not sure that this is one of them. On the other hand, if you want a bit of light reading and to catch up on some of the latest results concerning gravity at the same time then this book is eminently suitable. Continued..

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Beyond Pluto Cambridge University Press, 2002 ISBN: 0521800196 Mentioned in Full Review In this book John Davies describes the search for Kuiper Belt Objects, from the early days when a few dedicated astronomers struggled to find these elusive objects, to the successes of 1990's when it became a hot topic. Davies also presents us with the model of how our solar system is presently understood to have been created, and why KBOs may represent the most pristine remnants from that event. The book is easy to follow and will appeal both for the human story, and for the science generated by the birth of this new area of study. Continued..

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Ghost in the Atom Cambridge University Press, 1986 ISBN: 0521457289 Mentioned in Local Realism Quantum theory can seem rather puzzling. Schrödinger's cat is confusing enough, but that's relatively simple to understand compared with questions of entanglement and non-locality. This book is based on a series of eight radio programs where Paul Davies interviewed recognised experts in the subject. Thus it provides an opportunity for the reader to get a flavour of this subject without getting bogged down in philosophical handwaving. The book starts with an excellent introduction to the the subject by Davies and so is suitable for the non-specialist reader, but would also be useful for those with more knowledge of the subject who want an overview of the different positions held by different scientists. Continued..

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Quantum fields in curved space Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521233852 Mentioned in road to reality Co-author Birrell,N Graduate level mathematics, but not too difficult or abstract. Looks to be a suitable book to learn the subject.

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The Edge of Infinity Penguin, 1981 ISBN: 0140231943 When black holes began to become accepted, and Penrose and Hawking showed that singularities were inevitable, people began to wonder: Would singularities always be hidden behind an event horizon, or would it be possible to find a 'naked' singularity. This is the question Paul Davies considers in 'The edge of infinity'. The book is aimed at the non-technical reader, with the author explaining concepts such as mathematical infinites and the behaviour of black holes as necessary. Hence it is a useful book for those who want a gentle introduction to such subjects. Continued..

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The Goldilocks Enigma Allen Lane, 2006 ISBN: 0713998830 The laws of physics sometimes look as if they have been set up to allow for the emergence of life. In 'The Goldilocks Enigma' Paul Davies looks at the various explanations of why this should be so. For some people it is clear evidence of the existence of a deity. Others point to the idea of a multiverse - lots of universes exist, so some are bound to be 'just right' for life. Davies' preferred explanation takes a different tack - mind is central to the universe and participates in its existence. In summary, this book is easy to read but contains plenty of thought provoking material. Continued..

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A Devils Chaplain Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003 ISBN: 0297829734 Richard Dawkins is well known for his outspoken views, particularly on the subject of religion. A Devil's Chaplain is a collection essays he has written, about this and many other subjects. Now collections of essays such as this usually suffer from repetitiveness. It is a measure of Dawkin's skill as a writer (I guess the book's editor should take some credit too) that this doesn't happen - each of the essays brings something new. Some of the essays begin to take the form of a rant, but whether you agree or disagree with what he's saying, the book is well worth reading. Continued..

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The Ancestor's Tale Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN: 0297825038 Mentioned in Aventis prize Full Review This book takes us on a pilgrimage backwards in time, being joined by other living things along the way. Each chapter represents the organism at a joining in the evolutionary tree, which Dawkins calls a concestor.Thus we go from concestor 1 to concestor 39. There are also 'Tales' from various animals, each being an essay on some relevant topic in evolution. I felt that the structure of the book helped to remember what was read, and that Dawkins deals with a complex subject in a non-technical way. Certainly this book would make an impressive addition to anyone's bookshelf. Continued..

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The God Delusion Bantam, 2006 ISBN: 0593055489 Richard Dawkins' arguments against religion are well known. The God Delusion is a collection of such arguments, with answers to many of his critics. Some people object to Dawkins' stance on religion, but he rejects the idea that arguing about religion is OK as long as you keep away from a list of taboos which you are not allowed to mention - this is strictly no-holds-barred. Thus he shows how horrible the message from religious scriptures would be if you took it all seriously, as well as speculating on how religious belief could have originated in the first place. Continued..

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Climbing Mount Improbable Penguin, 1996 ISBN: 0141026170 The idea of an evolutionary landscape, with its peaks and valleys, is well known, and quite a few popular science writers have written about it. So what distinguishes Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable fom the others? Well, I felt that it was the wide range of examples which Dawkins brings to the reader. He starts off with examples of volutionary convergence, and goes on to look at subjects such as the spiders webs, the different methods of animal flight, and the shape of shells There are also chapters on embryo development and on pollination, including the life of the fig wasp. Continued..

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Logical dilemmas Peters, 1997 ISBN: 1568810253 Mentioned in Gdel's incompleteness theorem Kurt Gödel was rather reclusive, keeping himself to himself, especially afte the deaths of von Neumann and Einstein. This presents a problem for a biographer, as there are few people who know much about Gödel's life. What Gödel did leave was massive amounts of paperwork - he seemed to hoard every ticket and reciept he ever had. John W. Dawson has sifted through these and Logical dilemmas : the life and work of Kurt Gödel is the result. Continued..

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The Candle revisited Oxford University Press, 1994 ISBN: 019855835X In 1860 Michael Faraday gaves the Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution on 'The chemical history of a candle. The Candle revisited is a collection of articles, edited by Peter Day, which are based on recent talks at the Royal Institution starting with one by P.W. Atkins taking another look at the candle. The book is well illustrated and aimed at the non-specialist. If you're the sort of person who likes to read a short scientific article in your lunch hour then then you should take a look at this book. Continued..

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Life Evolving Oxford University Press, 2002 ISBN: 0195156056 How life arose and where humans fit in to the scheme of things are two of the big questions of which we are always searching for answers. In 'Life EvolvingChristian de Duve traces the path of our evolution, from the origin of life from a prebiotic soup, through the birth of the eukaryotic cell and multicellular life, up to humans, and what makes us what we are. De Duve is an expert in cell biology, but 'Life Evolving' is philosophical rather than technical, and will suit the reader wanting a gentle discussion of some of the deep questions of life. Continued..

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Freedom Evolves Viking Books, 2003 ISBN: 0670031860 Mentioned in Consciousness Full Review Physicalism seems to be the dominant philosophy of mind at present. However, the question is far from settled, so physicalism still needs its defenders. In Freedom Evolves Daniel Dennett continues his battle against Cartesian Dualism. He shows how what we call free will could have arisen from simple beginnings, without the need to postulate something extra. Its the sort of thing Dennett does well - constructing a model of how our minds might work and showing how experiments support this model. Hence the book is definitely worth reading, but I feel that he still spends too much time worrying about and taking cheap shots at Dualism. Continued..

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Consciousness explained Penguin, 1991 ISBN: 0140128670 Mentioned in Consciousness The nature of consciousness is one of the 'hard' problems of philosophy. In Consciousness Explained, Daniel C Dennett tackles the problems head on, arguing that one doesn't need the mysteries of dualism in order to make sense of consciousness. The book is in three parts. The first introduces Dennett's arguments, as well as heterophenomenology - how our minds makes sense of experiences which include other minds. The second part describes Dennett's multiple drafts model, as well as looking at the evolution of mind and the relationship between language and consciousness. The third part looks at other philosophies of mind, with, of course, plenty of attacks on dualism. Continued..

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Prime obsession : Bernhard Riemann and the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics Joseph Henry Press, 2003 ISBN: 0309085497 The Riemann hypothesis is a conjecture which has resisted attempts to prove it for a century and a half, and so is of great interest to the mathematical community. In 'Prime Obsession' John Derbyshire takes a dual approach to this topic, alternating mathematical chapters with chapters on the Riemann's life and the history of the hypothesis. I think that this works extremely well - if you are finding the maths hard going, then you have a break with a historical chapter (and vice-versa of course). I feel that it is a structure which other authors would do well to consider applying to their subject. Continued..

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Unknown Quantity Atlantic Books, 2006 ISBN: 9781843545699 X: The unknown quantity. But how did the idea of using letters to represent numbers in this way originate. That's one of the questions that John Derbyshire investigates in Unknown Quantity A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra. He looks at the work of early writers such as Diophantus, and describes how the development of the subject continued in the Arabic world. The book then moves on to the work done following the Renaissance in Europe, and in particular the solution of polynomial equations of one variable, leading to the work of Abel and Galois showing the insolubility of the quintic. Continued..

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In search of reality Springer, 1983 ISBN: 0387113991 Mentioned in Local Realism

The fabric of reality Allen Lane ISBN: 0140146903 Mentioned in road to reality quantum computing Deutsch is best known for his views on quantum computing and its link to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Naturally these subjects figure highly in this book, but I would say this isn't just a book about modern physics, in fact it's more of a philosophy book. If that's put you off then it shouldn't - this is philosophy as it should be written. In a non-technical and highly readable way, Deutsch puts forward the arguments for his view of the nature of reality, and I have to say that he is fairly persuasive - even for people like me who don't believe in the many worlds interpretation Continued..

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The Millennium problems Basic books ISBN: 0465017304 Mentioned in P vs NP To celebrate the coming of the new millennium, the Clay Mathematics Institute offered a $1,000,000 for the solution of each of seven mathematical problems. (If you fancy having a go at one of them, well the Poincaré conjecture has already been solved, but you might be interested in my thoughts on the P vs NP problem) In The Millennium Problems Keith Devlin gives an introduction to each of these problems. The book is written in a non-technical style without too much mathematics, and so is suitable for any reader who wants to get an idea of the nature of these seven problems. Continued..

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The man of numbers Bloomsbury, 2011 ISBN: 1408815761 Fibonacci is known for his sequence of numbers, but in The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution Keith Devlin shows that he actually played a significant part in introducing the arithmetic we use today to the Western world. Continued..

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The third chimpanzee Radius, 1991 ISBN: 0091777704 The small genetic distance between humans and chimpanzees means that they should all be classified together in the genus Homo. It is with this thought that Jared Diamond starts this book. He then goes on to look at many aspects of humanity, how they evolved, and how they fit in with the rest of the animal kingdom. Human sexuality, language, agriculture, war (and genocide) and art are examined from this point of view as well as drug use and environmental crises. The result is a highly readable book with interesting answers to some of the questions which humans pose for themselves. Continued..

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Collapse : how societies choose to fail or survive Penguin Books, 2005 ISBN: 0140279512 Mentioned in Full Review There are many predictions of gloom and doom today, but it's hard to know how seriously to take them. Is our society really heading towards disaster, or will we manage to get by as we have done in the past. In 'Collapse', Jared Diamond gives examples of societies which have indeed come to and end, and he hopes that we might learn something from them. What was the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree thinking? - without trees their society was clearly doomed. Diamond shows that it isn't simply a case of environmental stupidity, rather numerous factors contribute to the downfall of a society. He ends with a note of cautious optimism - we should be able to survive, but we will need to make some difficult choices. Continued..

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The Tiger that Isn't Profile Books, 2007 ISBN: 9781861978394 Co-author Blastland,Michael The media are constantly trying to get our attention by proclaiming some shocking statistic or other. InThe Tiger That Isn't: Seeing Through a World of Numbers Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot help the reader to judge such proclamations - are they really as shocking as they seem. Continued..

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Walking on Eggs Little, Brown, 2001 ISBN: 0316854891 Co-author Chiappe,Luis Many people must have dreamed of having a career as a palaeontologist - going to exotic places and discovering new dinosaur fossils. Walking on Eggs, by Luis Chiappe and Lowell Dingus, is the story of a group of scientists who did just that. It tells the story of the discovery in 1997 of a large number of dinosaur egg fossils in Patagonia. There are plenty of details about the trials and tribulations of travel in a remote area, and of excavating the eggs for further research. It's well worth reading if you want an insight into how such discoveries are actually made. Continued..

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Why life speeds up as you get older Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521834244 Mentioned in Aventis prize This is about autobiographical memory - what parts of our past we remember, and what we might get wrong. It's interesting reading, but it doesn't really deal with what the title claims.

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Galileo: A very short introduction Oxford University Press, 2001 ISBN: 0192854569 The surpression of Galileo's work by the church is often seen as a classic case of Science versus Religion. In Galileo: A very short introduction, Stillman Drake argues that it isn't quite that simple. Continued..

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Engines of creation Fourth Estate, 1990 ISBN: 1857024869 Sometimes the pace of technological change might seem to overwhelm us - but for nanotechnology there has been plenty of time to get used to the concept. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, written nearly 20 years ago, is Eric Drexler's classic work on the promises and dangers of this technology. Continued..

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What I Require From Life Oxford University Press, 2009 ISBN: 9780199237708 In What I Require From Life: Writings on science and life from J.B.S. Haldane Krishna Dronamraju has chosen a selection of the many articles written by Haldane. Continued..

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Stepping Stones Oxford University Press, 1999 ISBN: 0198508077 With today's worry about climate change and other environmental problems it is vital for people to have some background knowledge of the workings of the earth and its environment. Stepping Stones by Stephen Drury has the potential to fulfil this requirement, providing a grand overview of the history of the earth. It starts with the Earth's formation, and takes the reader through the origins and motions of continents as well as the evolution of life. All the while Drury looks at the effects of these changes on the climate, explaining how methods such as isotope ratios give us pretty detailed knowledge of what was happening hundreds of millions of years ago. I have to say though that I feel the book fails in its task. Continued..

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The music of the primes Fourth Estate, 2003 ISBN: 1841155799 Mentioned in Full Review To mark the start of the new millennium, the Clay Mathematics institute offered $1000000 for the solution of each of seven classic mathematical problems. The longest standing of these problems is Riemann hypothesis, concerning the zeros of the Riemann zeta function ζ(s), which is closely connected to the distribution of the primes. In 'The music of the primes' Marcus du Sautoy charts the history of attempts to prove this hypothesis. This is done via biographical details of those involved, so it doesn't require any prior mathematical knowledge. However, one can tell that it is a professional mathematician writing - he clearly knows the subject he is dealing with inside out. Continued..

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Finding Moonshine Fourth Estate, 2008 ISBN: 9780007214617 Mathematical Group theory seems a pretty obscure subject, and most people probably wouldn't think of theclassification of simple groups, completed in the 1980's, as being of ny interest. If you read Marcus du Sautoy's book Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician's Journey Through Symmetry, though, then you might get to understand the enthusiasm of a small number of people for this subject. Continued..

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Entropy and its physical meaning Taylor and Francis, 1996 ISBN: 0748405690 Mentioned in Absolute zero Entropy and its physical meaning by J.S Dugdale is a short undergraduate level textbook which explains the laws of thermodynamics, looking at their classical as well as their statistical formulation. The book inevitably contains quite a bit of mathematics, but none of it should be too taxing to an undergraduate science student. Also, the first half of book has plenty of discussion of the concepts involved, which makes the maths less of a problem (the later parts seemed more mathematical to me). The book has exercises at the end of each chapter, with solutions at the end, and would be a good choice for independent study of thermodynamics. Continued..

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Origins of Life Cambridge University Press, 1998 ISBN: 0521626684 Origins of Life is based on a series of lectures which Freeman Dyson gave in Cambridge in 1985. Dyson was strongly influenced by Schrödinger's What is Life - a work by a physicist which had substantial infuence on the progress of biology. Dyson feels that it is time to tackle the question of the origin of life on this planet. While many accounts of the origin of life concentrate on replication, Dyson thinks that metabolism is more important. He looks at how a homeostatic system might have arisen, and in the third chapter he presents a simple mathematical model of his ideas. Continued..

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Infinite in all directions Penguin, 1988 ISBN: 014014482X Infinite in all directions by Freeman Dyson is a version of his 1985 Gifford Lectures, which were entitled 'In Praise of diversity'. The first part of the book looks at diversity in science, looking at such varied topics as string theory, black holes, the Oort Cloud and the matamorphosis of butterflies - and that's just one lecture. Dyson goes on to compare the position of Athens in Greek science with that of Manchester in the industrial revolution an there are chapters looking at the beginning of life on earth as well as the ultimate fate of the universe. Continued..

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