100th Monkey Books

Scientific Cosmology



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The Cerebral Code: Thinking a Thought in the Mosaics of the Mind
William H.Calvin (1996) 256pages

This is a book about thought, memory, creativity, consciousness, narrative, talking to oneself, and even dreaming. In a book that parallels this one, How Brain Think, I explored those subjects in a general way but here I treat them as some of the predicted outcomes of a detailed Darwinian theory for how our cerebral cortex represents mental images - and occasionally recombines them, to create something new and different... Surprisingly, the subtitle's mosaics of the mind is not just a literary metaphor. It is a description of mechanism of what appears to be an appropriate level of explanation for many mental phenomena - that of hexagonal mosaics of electrical activity competing for territory in the association cortex of the brain...The cerebral code, strictly speaking would be what we use to convert thought into action, a translation table between the short-form cerebral pattern and its muscular implementation. ( MIT Press)



The Floating Egg: Episodes in the Making of Geology
Roger Osborne (1999) 372pages

The Floating Egg begins with the search for an alchemist's secret, and ends with the reimagination of a past world. Each chapter is connected to a particular corner of north-east England. Different episodes show how the fall of Constantinople converted the common rock of the Yorkshire cliffs into a source of extraordinary wealth and power, and how this in turn uncovered the inhabitants of a succession of past worlds; how a stone falling from the sky near the same coast changed the minds of all the natural philosophers of Europe; and how a new science was born on the top of the tower of York Minster. We learn about the cloak-and-dagger world of fossil trading in the town of Whitby; and we see the entire life-work of a forgotten scientific genius who died from consumption at the age of twenty-five, having revolutionized his science. The stories move from documentary accounts to fictional recreations of historic events, from contemporary writings and illustrations to present-day reflection. (Pimlico / Random House)



The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
Frank R. Wilson (1998) 397pages

The book you are holding is a meditation on the human hand, born of nearly two decades of personal and professional experiences that caused me to want to know more about the hand. Among these, two had the greatest impact: first, as an adult music novice, I tried to learn how to play the piano; second, as an experienced neurologist, I began to see patients who were having difficulty using their hands. Each experience afforded its own indelible lessons; each spawned its own progeny of questions...Ultimately, this "meditation seeks to juxtapose and integrate three quite different perspectives on the role of the hand in human life: 1. the anthropological and evolutionary perspective...2. the biomechanical and physiological perspective...3. the neurobehavioral and developmental perspective: how the dynamic interactions of hand and brain are developed and refined, and how that process relates to the unique character of human thought, growth, and creativity. The last of the three perspectives is the one that seems to me most in need of illumination...People are born resourceful and they become skillful and "thoughtful" when they genuinely care about what they are doing. One begins to understand the origins - and learns to appreciate the interdependence - of human skill, intelligence, and vitality by looking at the details, one piece and one person at a time. That is the real story I hope readers will find in these pages. - from the author's Prologue (Vintage)



The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story
Brian Swimme (1996)115pages

From the beginning, humans have been pondering the ultimate nature of existence. Shamans and sages, philosophers and saints, rishis and rabbis and theologians, all in their various ways, have reflected on the deep and endlessly fascinating questions of existence. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos wants to join that ancient tradition by asking the same questions, but from the perspective of contemporary science. The questions I consider in this present volume is perhaps the most ancient of all, "Where did it all come from? Where is the center of reality? Where is the heart or source of the universe? Where is that place where everything sprang forth into existence?" Relying on the discoveries of the modern scientific enterprise, and in particular of twentieth-century cosmology and quantum physics, we confront this perennial question not with any naive expectation that we will now answer with certitude questions which eluded our ancestors, but with the hope that we too might become just as engaged by the questions, and just as baffled and amazed by the answers...all of these meditations will begin within the context of the evolution of the cosmos, and will be guided by a single, unifying concern: "What does it mean to exist, as a human, in this vast unfolding universe? What is our role here? What is our destiny?" -from the author's Preface (Orbis Books)



Invention: The Care and Feeding of Ideas
Norbert Wiener (1993) 159pages

(MIT Press)






Material Faith: Thoreau on Science
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), edited by Laura Dassow Walls (1999)

Thoreau's positive ideal emerged early, to become a lifelong tenet of his faith: the poet would unite earth and sky, science and philosophy, generalizing "their widest deductions" and so crossing the "chasm between knowledge and ignorance" through his own practical experience and action in the world. The poet would turn science in "con-science," a moral knowledge. Paradoxically, it was his ideal that drew the poet Thoreau closer to the method of science, which sought to join fact and theory through the test of experience; "every poet"." he mused, "has trembled on the verge of science"(18July, 1852). - from the editor's Introduction (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin)



Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air
Theodor Schwenk (1965) 88pages

Man's relationship to water has changed completely during the last few centuries. Men gradually lost the knowledge and experience of the spiritual nature of water, until at last they came to treat it merely a a substance and a means of transmitting energy. At the beginning of the technical age, a few people in their inspired consciousness were still able to feel that the elements were filled with spiritual beings. People experienced the fluid element to be the universal element, not yet solidified but remaining open to outside influences, the unformed, indeterminate element, ready to receive definite form; they knew it as the "sensitive chaos" (Novalis, Fragmente). This book is intended as a contribution towards this kind of recognition of the nature of fluid elements. It is concerned mainly with water, the representative of all that is liquid in animate and inanimate nature, and also with streaming air. This book is based on scientific observations of water and air but above all on the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner. - from the author's Foreword. (Rudolf Steiner Press,1990)



The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration of Science and Philosophy
Guy Murchie (1978/99) 690pages, Illustrated by the Author

This is a book about life - all life in all words - and about life as the culminating celestial fact. I am writing it from the perspective of outer space as I did my last book, Music of the Spheres. That was about the material universe, and out of it the idea for this one sprouted as a sequel. But since the present subject perhaps over ambitiously deals with things not only physical but mental and spiritual, it inevitably leads us, as you will see, deeper into philosophy than ever before. In fact the abstruse mysteries that soon cumulated and curdled in my notebook and which I eventually boiled down to seven in number became (to my wonder) the burden of the book. - from the author's Prelude (Mariner / Houghton Mifflin)



The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding
Humberto R. Maturana & Francisco J. Varela (1987/1992) 269pages

The book that you now hold in your hands is not just another introduction to the biology of cognition. It is a complete outline for an alternative view of the biological roots of understanding...we will propose a way of seeing cognition not as a representation of the world "out there," but rather as an ongoing bringing forth of a world through the process of living itself. To accomplish this goal, we shall follow a rigorous conceptual itinerary, wherein every concept builds on preceding ones, until the whole is an indissociable network. We thus discourage a casual, diagonal reading of this book. In compensation, we have done our best to provide a wealth of illustrations and a conceptual map of salient ideas, clearly indicated in the text as separate boxes, so that readers can always find where they are standing along the journey. - from the authors' Preface (Shambhala)



The Universe is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story
Brian Swimme (1984) 173pages

What I present in the pages of this book is the overall picture of the cosmic creation story, told in a single evening's conversation. I call the two speakers THOMAS and YOUTH. By THOMAS I want to honor Thomas Berry and the cosmological tradition he celebrates, stretching back from Erich Jantsch and Teilhard de Chardin through Thomas Aquinas to Plato....I call the other human YOUTH to remind us that the human species is the youngest, freshest, most immature, newest species of all the advanced life forms on the planet. We have only just arrived. If we can remain resilient, if we can continue our questioning, our developing, our hoping, if we can live in awe and in the depths of wonder, we will continue moving into the only process that now matters - our authentic maturation as a species. it is in this way and only this way that we will enable the Earth to bloom once again. - from the author's Prologue (Bear & Co)



The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era - A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos
Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry (1992)

The narrative of the universe, told in the sequence of its transformations and in the depth of its meaning, will undoubtedly constitute the comprehensive context of the future. Already through this story the various peoples of the Earth are identifying where they are in time and space. They are also attaining a sense of relatedness to the various living and nonliving components of the earth community. Through this story we learn that we have a common genetic line of development. Every living being of Earth is cousin to every other living being. Even beyond the realm of the living we have a common origin in the primordial Flaring Forth of the energies from which the universe in all its aspects is derived. "The Universe Story" refers of course to the book we have written, but only in a secondary way. The primary referent of our title is the great story taking place throughout the universe. This creative adventure is too subtle, too overwhelming, and too mysterious ever to be captured definitively. Thus we venture our telling with a certain hesitancy. Our aim is to awaken those sensitivities to the great story that enable a rich participation in the ongoing adventure. We offer this brief narrative in the hope that others will fill in what is missing, correct what is improperly presented, and deepen our understanding of the ongoing story. -from the authors' Introduction ( HarperSanFrancisco)



Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: The History of Heat
Han Christian von Baeyer (1998) 207pages

Why can't your coffee "steal" heat from the air to stay piping hot? Why can't Detroit make a car that's 100 per cent efficient? Why can't some genius make a perpetual motion machine? The answer lies in the field of thermodynamics, the study of heat, which turns out to be the key to an astonishing number of scientific puzzles, including why time inexorably runs in only one direction. In this book, physics professor Hans Christian von Baeyer tells the story of heat through the lives of scientists who discovered it. (Modern Library)



What is Life?
Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan (1995)

What is Life? is a scientific and philosophical exploration of this most fascinating question. Along the way, it explores the opposite question: What is death?; in addition, it delves into the origins of life and examines Earth's status as a superorganism, the biological connection between programmed death and sex, the symbiotic evolution of the five organic kingdoms ( bacteria, protoctists, animals, fungi, and plants), the solar basis of the global heat-exchange economy, and the startling suggestion that life- not just human life- is free to act and has played an unexpectedly large part in its own evolution. ( )



Wholeness and the Implicate Order
David Bohm (1980) 224pages

(Routledge)


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