From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Dec 28 2001 - 02:27:01 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker:
>Amara Graps:
>> Many months ago, I pulled together a list of books that I thought
>> might be a good start to help a person to think/be more like a
>> renaissance human, but in today's world: so some 'basics' plus more
>> ideas to expand one's vision of the universe.
>
>Many, many thanks. Your recommendation carries a lot of weight
>with me, and I'm only 15-for-27 on your list. Looks like its
>time for a trip to the bookstore.
Thanks for your thanks, Lee.
>> This list is totally subjective of course, and yes, this list is
>> lacking a number of areas (I would next add more philosophy,
>> probably starting with Aristotle)
>
>Yes, the classic stuff like Aristotle and Plato's dialogues, but allow
>me to add some more modern ones: Mortimer Adler's "The Great Ideas: A
>Lexicon of Western Thought"; Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its
>Enemies"; Daniel Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"; Steven Pinker's
>"The Language Instinct"; Marvin Minsky's "Society of Mind"; Oliver
>Sacks' "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat"; Richard Dawkins'
>"The Selfish Gene"; Matt Ridley's "Genome"; Natalie Angier's "Woman:
>An Intimate Geography".
Nice.
I think it's a valuable exercise to make one of these 'renaissance
human' lists for oneself: it would never be 'wrong', would help
ourselves think of what makes a well-rounded and future-thinking
human (and such a list is always missing some areas, which is
useful to be aware of too). And if one wants (since such a list is
somewhat personal, so not always easy to drop the walls) one could
show other people our (individual) lists, in order to gain some new
insights into other people's thinking.
Amara
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Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"One world at a time." --Thoreau
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