Philosophy of science and mind

Falsifiability as the line between science and non-science.

Science moves through long stretches of normal work broken by paradigm shifts.

Knowledge grows by bold guesses that we then try to refute, not by proof.

How a mind could arise from parts, traced through Godel, Escher and Bach.

Applies the Seven Habits to organisations: lead by fixed principles, not by values.

Reality through four strands: many-worlds physics, computation, evolution, Popper.

How the sciences and humanities can be unified by causal links from physics up.

A dialogue on thinking clearly: reality is simple, conflicts can be resolved.

Knowledge can grow without limit through good explanations that are hard to vary.

Why economics misapplies probability to problems where the future is unknowable.

Genes as a river of digital information; a short Dawkins primer

Eco on how we categorise the world and where categories fail

Nozick on objectivity and what stays invariant across perspectives

How evidence and probability were reasoned about before formal statistics

Elster on mechanisms rather than laws in the social sciences

Meadows wrote this before systems thinking became a popular phrase, and it remains the clearest account of why short-term interventions in complex systems so often backfire. The chapter on leverage points is the conceptual core of what long-term thinking actually requires from decision-makers.

A quant on confusing models with reality, in finance and life

Short essays on the scientific concepts most worth adopting

The limits of scientific knowledge and what cannot be measured

When the simpler theory is the better one: the principle of parsimony tested.

How present certainties will look to the future; outside view applied

Dawkins narrates the whole of evolutionary history as a pilgrimage backward in time, meeting ancestors at each branching point. The cumulative effect is a felt sense of deep time that no abstract statement about 'billions of years' can produce. Reading this first recalibrates everything that follows.

Examples showing what the logical-analytic method in philosophy can and cannot do.

Essays, talks and letters from 1934 to 1950 on social, religious and school issues.

Argues that scientific knowledge joins personal experience, moral judgement and data.

Creativity in humour, science and art as 'bisociation': joining two unrelated frames.

The theory that consciousness is learned, arising from a once two-chambered mind.

Metaphor as a basic mechanism of thought that shapes how people understand the world.

Thirty selections from Popper's writings, chosen to show the range of his ideas.

Analytic philosophy and logic presented through humour

A philosophy student marries a math prodigy and weighs the mind against the body.

Information theory as a unifying idea across three scientists' work

A collection of Richard Feynman's best short works.

Argues that string theory is not a theory at all, since it makes no predictions.

Rare, unforeseen, high-impact events drive history, explained only after the fact.

Philosophical treatment of contingency and the practice of option trading

Short illustrated catalogue of the common logical fallacies

Thought experiments and other tools a philosopher uses to reason carefully.

From the origin of the universe through life and consciousness to what it all means.

The nature of space, time and the quantum world, on the road to quantum gravity.

Subtitled A Guide to Clear Thinking About Wall Street, Investing, and Life.

An argument that consciousness is not algorithmic and rests on quantum mechanics.

The mind-body problem from Descartes to today, and a case for neutral monism.