History & 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....

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology....

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers....

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....

Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story....

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 ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases.

Engaging, thought-provoking, and groundbreaking, The Immortal Mind shows here that some aspect of who we are is spiritual and immortal, transcending the physical body.

A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality.....

In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn....

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman....

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others....

The Enchiridion or Manual of Epictetus (Enchiridion is Greek for "that which is held in the hand") is a short manual of Stoic ethical advice. This manual has been carefully adapted in to modern English to allow for easy listening. Enjoy....

Nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters....

Merchants of Doubt tells, with “brutal clarity” (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades....

In 1610, Galileo published the Siderius nuncius, or Starry Messenger, a "hurried little masterpiece" in John Heilbron's words....

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....

A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals....

Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation....

The New York Times best-selling author of Darwin’s Doubt presents groundbreaking scientific evidence of the existence of God, based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology....

The authors of the best-selling Bold and The Rise of Superman explore altered states of consciousness and how they can ignite passion, fuel creativity, and accelerate problem solving....

From the New York Times-bestselling author comes a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts....

This controversial and compelling audiobook from Dr. Stephen C. Meyer presents a convincing new case for intelligent design based on revolutionary discoveries in science and DNA....

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value....

A magnificently reported and soulfully crafted exploration of the human immune system - the key to health and wellness, life and death. An epic, first-of-its-kind audiobook, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives....

In this bold and interdisciplinary journey through neuroscience, theoretical physics, and artificial intelligence, neurologist Dr. Chris Reynolds proposes a revolutionary model of consciousness: the Probability Clock. At the heart of this model lies the thalamus—a central brain structure long known for relaying sensory input. But in Reynolds’ view, the thalamus does far more: it recursively filters, times, and shapes experience itself.

Voici une histoire radicalement nouvelle de l'énergie qui montre l’étrangeté fondamentale de la notion de transition. Elle explique comment matières et énergies sont reliées entre elles, croissent ensemble, s’accumulent et s’empilent les unes sur les autres. Pourquoi la notion de transition énergétique s’est-elle alors imposée ? Comment ce futur sans passé est-il devenu, à partir des années 1970, celui des gouvernements, des entreprises et des experts, bref, le futur des gens raisonnables ?

In this captivating, insightful book, acclaimed physicists Alan Lightman and Martin Rees illuminate the life and work of numerous scientists in order to demystify the scientific process and show that scientists are concerned citizens, just like the rest of us.

Free Creations of the Human Mind: The Worlds of Albert Einstein presents a concise and nuanced account of Einstein's life and work embedded in his intellectual and social contexts. His life is interconnected with so many of the important political and intellectual movements of his era—Zionism, pacifism, Nazism, nuclear weapons, philosophy, civil rights, McCarthyism, the League of Nations, and substantial discoveries in epochal theories of special relativity and quantum theory.

This book argues that we are entering an age where humanity must build truly complex things to continue our progress. This means learning to build as nature builds, and as it turns out, forces us to redefine knowledge and skill, and more broadly our scientific and engineering paradigm.