Philosophy

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to...

An Instant New York Times Bestseller From one of our leading chroniclers of the intersection of innovation and capitalism, a landmark reckoning—based on unprecedented access—with one of the world’s most brilliant and driven tech visionaries, and his game-changing company Even by the...

THE #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER One of the world’s most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body takes his ultimate journey—into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. “Brims with strange and amazing facts...

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Find out....

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning...

Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on...

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s latest New York Times bestseller is a guide to meditation as a rational practice informed by neuroscience and psychology. From Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of numerous New York Times bestselling books...

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science - a life like no other...

A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them. Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us―and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are...

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

The epic stories of our planet's 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata―ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a...

We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. Philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists....

Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings....

Predicting society’s present addiction to technology, our challenges with data privacy, and the dramatic increase in drug overdoses and depression that have accompanied a technology-induced lack of purpose, The Unabomber’s vision of the future has become our reality....

A theoretical physicist takes listeners on an awe-inspiring journey-found in "no other book" (Science)—to discover how the universe generates everything from nothing at all: "If you want to know what's really going on in the realms of relativity and particle physics, read this book" (Sean...

Over the last 220 years, society has evolved a universal belief that electricity is "safe" for humanity and the planet. Scientist and journalist Arthur Firstenberg disrupts this conviction by telling the story of electricity in a way it has never been told before....

The New York Times bestselling author of Darwin’s Doubt presents groundbreaking scientific evidence of the existence of God, based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology. Beginning in the late 19th century, many intellectuals began to insist that scientific knowledge conflicts...

"This engaging, conversational book begs to be read aloud, and who better than its author?... Tyson’s warmth and erudition make him a superb narrator of this excellent, thought-provoking book."- Library Journal "Like a spaceship traveling the stars, Tyson's voice flows smoothly as he delivers...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, “brilliant and witty” (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to...

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind examines where the self comes from – and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. “I Am a Strange Loop is a work of rigorous thinking, but it’s also an extraordinary tribute to the memory of romantic love: The Year of...

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story...

The companion book to COURSERA's wildly popular massive open online course "Learning How to Learn" Whether you are a student struggling to fulfill a math or science requirement, or you are embarking on a career change that requires a new skill set, A Mind for Numbers offers the tools you need...

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery “Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world...

The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain focuses on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body. Coping with death and grief is one of the most painful human experiences. While...

From one of the world’s most celebrated intellectuals, a “fascinating” (Financial Times), brilliantly insightful work that explains how we think about each other’s thoughts about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the...

The real story of science isn’t a triumphant breakthrough. It’s messy, mysterious, and deeply human. In Lost in Curiosity, award-winning journalist Roberta Kwok pulls back the curtain on what scientific discovery actually looks like… Not a Eureka moment, but a fraught, often chaotic...

Are we alone in the universe? Mars has always seemed where we were likeliest to find the answer. Yet, since the Viking landers touched down in 1976, no mission has returned to the Martian surface to search directly for life living there now. Instead we’re searching the moons of outer planets...

Newly aware she had a fifty-fifty chance of developing the same condition, Wexler could have retreated. Instead, she immersed herself in what has become a lifetime's pursuit of the causes of the disease and a cure. She pioneered groundbreaking fieldwork that enabled the identification of the responsible gene. She took charge of what is now the Huntington's Disease Foundation and made it a force to be reckoned with.

Every atom in your body has already been replaced. You didn’t notice. You didn’t stop being you. So what makes you you? It’s not the matter. The atoms in your brain right now aren’t the same ones that were there ten years ago. Neuroscience says your consciousness comes from how your brain is organized and how it functions, not from which specific carbon atoms happen to be sitting in your neurons on any given Tuesday. Mark Douglas spent decades following that observation to its logical end. The conclusion is not what you’d expect.

Carl Hempel Explained: Scientific Explanation, Confirmation Theory, Logical Positivism, Laws of Nature, and the Structure of Science introduces one of the key architects of twentieth-century philosophy of science in a way that is precise, readable, and grounded in the actual problems he tried to solve. Hempel asked what makes an explanation scientific, how evidence confirms a hypothesis, why some regularities count as laws, and how the structure of science can be described without slipping into vagueness. This book gives a focused account of those questions for readers who want a serious ...

As the climate emergency worsens and biodiversity shrinks, we somehow get used to it. We struggle to remember what summers were like before the unrelenting heat, in those years before wildfires became an annual routine. We adapt, we normalize. Scientists call this "shifting baseline syndrome,"...

Rudolf Carnap Explained: Logical Positivism, Verification, Scientific Knowledge, and the Unity of Science introduces one of the key architects of twentieth-century philosophy in clear, concrete terms. Carnap is often reduced to a few slogans about verification or dismissed as a failed positivist. The reality is more interesting. He worked on the problem of meaning, the relation between observation and theory, the logic of scientific explanation, and the hope that different sciences could be connected within a common framework. This book explains what Carnap was trying to do, why it mattered...

They conquered the Minoans, fought at the walls of Troy, and ruled Greece from citadels so massive that later Greeks swore giants had built them. Then their world burned — and Greece forgot how to write for four hundred years. In 1876, Heinrich Schliemann lifted a hammered gold death mask from a grave at Mycenae and declared he had gazed upon the face of Agamemnon. He was wrong — the mask is three centuries too old — but the find proved something astonishing: the age of heroes sat on top of a real civilization no one knew existed. The first Greeks. The Mycenaeans. This is their full ...

In The New Sociology of Science, Boris Kriger delivers a direct challenge to the institutional foundations of modern science. The book argues that truth alone has never been enough — and is not even decisive. What determines whether an idea becomes science is not its correctness, but its ability to pass through fragile, often distorted social channels of persistence. Reinterpreting Auguste Comte, Kriger overturns the classical view: sociology is not the highest science — it is the hidden condition without which no science exists at all. From this follows a disturbing conclusion.

Confront the existential mystery of modern science and philosophy: are we living inside a programmed simulation? Perfect for a contemplative commute or late-night deep focus, this mind-bending exploration transforms abstract sci-fi concepts into a rigorous investigation of reality. Prepare for...

Uncover the existential science and philosophy suggesting our universe is a programmed virtual reality simulation. Perfect for your thought-provoking morning commute, this deep dive explores how a wild science fiction trope evolved into a serious debate among physicists and technologists...

Question the simulation hypothesis and discover if our physical reality is actually a vast cosmic computer program. Moving beyond internet hype and science fiction tropes, this mind-bending exploration brings scientific rigor to the ultimate existential mystery. Perfect for a deep-focus commute...

John Dee's 1570 Mathematicall Praeface introduced English readers to a vision of mathematics far broader than calculation alone. Written for Henry Billingsley's first complete English translation of Euclid's Elements and printed in London by John Day, it begins with the status of mathematical objects, moves through number and magnitude, and branches into a wide-ranging catalogue of arts. Optics, astronomy, music, surveying, mechanics, medicine, architecture, navigation, image making, artificial marvels, and Archemastrie all enter Dee's order of knowledge. This edition offers a complete ...

What happens when one of the most brilliant young physicists in America refuses to stop asking forbidden questions? David Bohm should have had a secure place at the center of twentieth-century physics. He studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer, worked at Princeton, drew the attention of Albert Einstein, and wrote one of the most respected early textbooks on quantum theory. Then the Cold War turned against him. Called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Bohm refused to betray others. Princeton suspended him. America closed its doors. But exile did not silence him. Instead, it ...

What if common sense is not the foundation of reality, but only its surface? For centuries, realism seemed obvious. Objects possess properties. Events have histories. Measurement reveals what is already there. A clock ticks whether anyone watches it. A cat is alive or dead, but not both. Quantum mechanics shattered that confidence. In Leggett and the Tests of Realism, Clayton Louis Turnage explores the work of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Anthony Leggett, one of the key figures who pushed quantum foundations beyond Bell’s theorem and into the strange territory of macroscopic reality. ...