I am not a physicist now but,
The Feynman Lectures on Physics really lured me to love physics in high school
Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
221–230 of 283 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#222A very tough question. I feel that it might be quite hard to lure a curious person into Computer Science, who doesn't know anything about the field yet. One of the books I liked (since I actually studied Linguistics in my Bachelor's) and what drew me towards CS was "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold.
What about a book for Linguistics? I also studied Linguistics and now while I still find the knowledge useful (getting to describe to my son a voiced vs unvoiced plosive) I am not as interested in it anymore.
Why Only Us: Language and Evolution by Chomsky and Berwick if you're interested in some of the deeper questions in linguistics. It's a bit heavy but aimed at a general technical audience.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#223Great question actually, love the wording and framing of it.
For field archeology: The Making of the English Landscape by Hoskins.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#224Mathematics: Burns, Marilyn (1975) I hate Mathematics Book, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Brown-Paper-School-Books/... Mathematics, philosophy, music, molecular biology/biochemistry, computer science, visual art, poetry, cognitive science: Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979) Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid. New York, NY: Basic Books. ("GEB") Computer Science: Abelso…
I think SICP is a good text that is attractive for a very specific type of person, but in my experience the majority of people would be put off by it.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#225In my field it was only SICP.
And then maybe during the fractal wave The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#226Working as an UX Engineer, I always recommend „refactoring UI“ by Adam Watham. It‘s super easy to read, most pictures speak for themselfes. This book targets developers who like to put their UI on the next level.
Couldn't find it by that name, turns out it's Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#227Someone post something about astronomy also please!
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Professor Sapolsky on Chaos (class on Human Biology/Biology of Behaviour): Chaos year after year after year in this class provokes the strongest opinions. A quarter of the people decide it is the most irritating, irrelevant thing that could possibly have been assigned in the class and hate it. About half the people never quite figure out what's up with it. And a quarter of the people, their life is transformed. They…
Sapolski's book (Behave) and his Stanford classes on YouTube are just awesome.
I loved the videos of his lectures on YouTube and I didn't know he wrote a book. Adding this to my queue and bumping it up near to the front :)
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#229Alice in Numberland by Baylis and Haggarty was one of the books that made me want to become a mathematician when I found it in the school library and read it as a teenager. There was also a little set of booklets called Derek Holton's Problem Solving Series that drew me in but I'm sure they must be impossible to get hold of now.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#230(I'm in my late 30s, but I always try to look for "time-tested" books first. Books that seem to hold their value after decades; see also: Lindy effect.) Language and linguistics: "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphors_We_Live_By Systems thinking: "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" by Gerald M. Weinberg (1975): https://geraldmweinberg.com/Sit…
I would add The Embodied Mind - Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson (1991) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/embodied-mind-revised-edition A great accomponiment to the first two, and a great read for those in AI related fields to start thinking about cognition more holistically and less computationally.
+1. Haven't read that one, but I remember being fascinated by Varela's "Ethical Know-how: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition": https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=896