Coming of Age in the Milky Way

by Timothy Ferris

  Darwin, Francis, ed. Charles Darwin’s Autobiography. New York: Schuman, 1950. Like Einstein’s, more an outline than an autobiography, written late in life.

  —————, ed. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1888; New York: Basic Books, 1959.

  Darwin, George. Scientific Papers. 5 vols. London: Cambridge University Press, 1907–1916.

  Davies, P.C.W. The Forces of Nature. London: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Semitechnical.

  —————. The Physics of Time Asymmetry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Technical investigation of the unidirectional motion of time from the perspective of physics.

  —————. Space and Time in the Modern Universe. London: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Semitechnical account of relativity and cosmology.

  Davies, Paul. God and the New Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.

  —————. Superforce. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Popular account of grand unified theory.

  Davis, Nuel Pharr. Lawrence and Oppenheimer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968. Report on two of the most influential figures in the development of American atomic policy.

  Davis, Philip J., and Reuben Hersh. The Mathematical Experience. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1981. Popular exposition of mathematical concepts and methods.

  DeBeer, Gavin. Charles Darwin, Evolution by Natural Selection. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964. Succinct account of Darwin’s life, de Broglie, Louis. New Perspectives in Physics. New York: Basic Books, 1962.

  —————, Louis-Armand, Pierre-Henri Simon, et al. Einstein. New York: Peebles Press, 1979. Centenary observations.

  Debus, Allen G. Man and Nature in the Renaissance. London: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

  De Madariaga, Salvador. Christopher Columbus. London: Hollis & Carter, 1949.

  Descartes, Rene. Geometry, trans. David Eugene Smith and Marcia L. Latham. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.

  —————. Philosophical Works, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross. London: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

  —————. Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Thomas Geach. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971, 1981.

  —————. Principles of Philosophy, trans. Valentine Rodger Miller and Reese P. Miller. Boston: Reidel, 1983.

  DeSober, Elliott. The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.

  D’Espagnat, Bernard. Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Reading, Mass.: Benjamin, 1976.

  DeWitt, CM., and John Archibald Wheeler, eds. Battelle Seattle Summer Rencontres in Mathematics and Physics, 1967. New York: Benjamin, 1968.

  Diaz, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J.M. Cohen. London: Penguin, 1975.

  Dick, Steven J. Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant. London: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

  Dicks, D.R. Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970.

  Dickson, F.P. The Bowl of Night. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968. Accessible review of enduring cosmological questions.

  Dijksterhuis, E.J. The Mechanization of the World Picture. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.

  Dingle, Herbert. Through Science to Philosophy. London: Oxford University Press, 1937.

  Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Philosophers, ed. and trans. A. Robert Caponigri. Chicago: Regnery, 1969.

  —————. Lives of the Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.

  Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice. The Development of Quantum Theory. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1971. Succinct summary, based on remarks delivered on accepting the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize.

  —————. The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. London: Oxford University Press, 1981. Textbook that educated a generation of physicists.

  Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy. London: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

  Dobrzycki, Jerzy, ed. The Reception of Copernicus’s Heliocentric Theory. Boston: Kluwer, 1973.

  Dobzhansky, Theodosius, et al. Evolution. San Francisco: Freeman, 1977. Standard textbook.

  Dodd, J.E. The Ideas of Particle Physics. London: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Introduction intended for scientists in other fields.

  Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951.

  Doig, Peter. A Concise History of Astronomy. New York: Philosophical Library, 1951.

  Drachman, J.M. Studies in the Literature of Natural Science. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Includes discussion of Lyell and Darwin.

  Drake, Frank. Intelligent Life in Space. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

  Drake, Stillman. Galileo. New York: Hill & Wang, 1980.

  —————. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

  —————, ed. and trans. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957. Includes Galileo’s The Starry Messenger, Letters on Sunspots, and The Assayer.

  Draper, John William. History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. New York: Appleton, 1879. Inquiries into the historical background of the decline of religious faith and the rise of science in the late nineteenth century.

  Dryer, J.L.E. A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler. New York: Dover, 1953. Intellectual history of early astronomy.

  —————. Tycho Brahe. Edinburgh: 1890; New York: Dover, 1963. Standard biography.

  Drude, Paul. The Theory of Optics. New York: Dover, 1959. Book that influenced the young Einstein.

  Duff, M.J., and C.J. Isham. The Quantum Structure of Space and Time. London: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Proceedings of a workshop held at Imperial College, London, in 1981.

  Duhem, Pierre. To Save the Phenomena, trans. Edmund Doland and Chaninah Maschler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

  Dukas, Helen, and Banesh Hoffmann, eds. Albert Einstein: The Human Side. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979. Unique collection of Einstein memorabilia. Includes the German originals as well as their translations.

  Duns Scotus. Philosophical Writings, trans. Allan Wolter. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974.

  Durham, Frank, and Robert D. Purrington. Frame of the Universe. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Brief history of cosmology.

  Dyson, Freeman. Perspectives in Modern Physics. New York: Interscience, 1966.

  Dyson, J.E., and D.A. Williams. The Physics of the Interstellar Medium. New York: Wiley, 1980.

  Eddington, Alfred Stanley. The Nature of the Physical World. New York: Macmillan, 1929.

  —————. The Philosophy of Physical Science. New York: Macmillan, 1939.

  Eicher, Don L. Geologic Time. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Chronicles the establishment of modern geochronology.

  Eigen, Manfred, and Ruthild Winkler. Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance. New York: Knopf, 1981.

  Einstein, Albert. Essays in Humanism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1983.

  —————. Ideas and Opinions, trans. Sonja Bargmann. New York: Dell, 1979.

  —————: The Meaning of Relativity. Princeton, N.J.: University Press, 1923.

  —————. Out of My Later Years. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1979.

  —————. The Principle of Relativity, trans. W. Perrett and G.B. Jeffrey. New York: Dover, 1952. Useful but marred by errors in translation.

  —————. Relativity: The Special and General Theory, trans. Robert W. Lawson. New York: Crown, 1961.

  —————. Sidelights on Relativity. London: Methuen, 1922. Includes discussion of aether theory.

  —————. The World As I See It, trans. A. Harris. New York: Philosophical Library, 1935.

  —————, and Leopold Infeld. The
Evolution of Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1938.

  Eiseley, Loren. Darwin’s Century. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958. Study of Darwin’s intellectual and scientific milieu.

  —————. The Firmament of Time. New York: Atheneum, 1970. Based on lectures given at the University of Cincinnati in 1959.

  Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. London: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

  Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard Trask. New York: Harper, 1959. Treatise on the doctrine of cyclical time.

  Elkana, Yehuda. The Discovery of the Conservation of Energy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.

  Elliott, James P., and P.G. Dawber. Symmetry in Physics. London: Macmillan, 1979.

  Examination of symmetry in classical and quantum physics, with an emphasis on group theory.

  Emmerson, John McLaren. Symmetry Principles in Particle Physics. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.

  Epictetus. Discourses, trans. George Long. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.

  —————. Discourses, trans. W.A. Oldfather. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.

  Epstein, Lewis Carroll. Relativity Visualized. San Francisco: Insight, 1985. Amply illustrated, right-forebrain explication of the special and general theories.

  Eratosthenes. Measurement of the Earth, trans. Ivor Thomas. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.

  Euclid. The Elements, trans. Isaac Barrow. London: Redmayne, 1705.

  —————. The Elements, ed. and trans. Thomas L. Heath. 3 vols. New York: Dover, 1956.

  Eve, A.S. Rutherford. London: Cambridge University Press, 1939.

  Fakhry, Ahmed. The Pyramids. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

  Farrar, Glennys, and Frank Henyey, eds. Problems in Unification and Supergravity. New York: American Institute of Physics, 1984.

  Feigl, Herbert, and May Brodbeck, eds. Readings in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Appleton, 1953.

  Feinberg, Gerald. What Is the World Made Of? New York: Anchor, 1978. Popular account of nuclear physics.

  —————, and Robert Shapiro. Life Beyond Earth: An Intelligent Earthling’s Guide to Life in the Universe. New York: Morrow, 1980.

  Ferguson, James. Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, 2nd ed. London: self-published, 1757. Popularization that helped kindle William Herschel’s passion for astronomy.

  Ferguson, Wallace, et al. The Renaissance: Six Essays. New York: Harper, 1953.

  Ferm, Vergilius. History of Philosophical Systems. Paterson, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1965.

  Fermi, Enrico. Collected Papers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

  Fermi, Laura, and Gilberto Bernardini. Galileo and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1961.

  Fernie, Donald. The Whisper and the Vision: The Voyages of the Astronomers. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1976. Account of transit expeditions undertaken to measure the dimensions of the solar system.

  Ferris, Timothy. Galaxies. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980.

  —————. The Mind’s Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Reflections on the place of life and intelligence in an evolving cosmos.

  —————. The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe. New York: Morrow, 1977, 1983.

  —————. The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Report on inflationary cosmology prior to the discovery of dark energy.

  Feuer, Lewis S. Einstein and the Generations of Science. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Impressionistic study of Einstein’s social milieu.

  Feynman, Richard P. QED. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Unversity Press, 1985. Nontechnical introduction to quantum electrodynamics, by an author of the theory.

  —————. The Character of Physical Low. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965. Feynman lectures on philosophy of science.

  —————, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The Feynman Letures of Physics. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1963. Classic introduction for scientifically inclined undergraduates, by one of the architects of contemporary quantum physics.

  Finney, Ben R., and Eric M. Jones, ed. Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

  Fiske, John. Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Based on the Doctrine of Evolution. 4 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1874. Concerns the philosophy of Herbert Spencer.

  Flew, A. God and Philosophy. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966.

  Flurry, Robert L. Quantum Chemistry: An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983.

  Folse, Henry J. The Philosophy of Niels Bohr. New York: North-Holland, 1985. Scholarly though nontechnical discussion of Bohr’s philosophy of complementarity.

  Folsome, Clair Edwin. The Origin of Life. San Francisco: Freeman, 1979. Popular account of the origin of the solar system and of life on Earth.

  Fontenelle, Bernard de. A Plurality of Worlds, trans. John Glanville. London: Nonesuch Press, 1929.

  Fosdick, Harry Emerson, ed. Great Voices of the Reformation. New York: Random House, 1952.

  Foster, J., and J.D. Nightingale. A Short Course in General Relativity. London: Longman, 1979.

  Foucault, Michel. This Is Not a Pipe, ed. and trans. James Harkness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Study of symbolism and logic in the work of Rene Magritte.

  Fox, Sidney, and Klaus Dose. Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life. San Francisco: Freeman, 1972.

  Frank, Philipp. Einstein: His Life and Times. New York: Knopf, 1970. Biography by its subject’s friend and colleague. American edition unaccountably abridged.

  —————. Foundations of the Unity of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946.

  Frankel, Charles. The Faith of Reason: The Idea of Progress in the French Enlightenment. New York: Octagon, 1948.

  Franz, Marie-Louise von. Creation Myths. Dallas: Spring, 1972.

  Fraser, J.T. The Voices of Time. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. Collection of scientific and humanistic essays.

  Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough. New York: Macmillan, 1940.

  Freeman, Kathleen. The Presocratic Philosophers. Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell, 1949.

  Freeman, R.B. Charles Darwin: A Companion. Kent, Eng.: Dawson, 1978. Index of Darwinia.

  French, A.P. Newtonian Mechanics. New York: Norton, 1971.

  —————. Special Relativity. New York: Norton, 1968.

  —————, and Edwin F. Taylor. An Introduction to Quantum Physics. New York: Norton, 1978.

  —————, ed., Einstein: A Centenary Volume. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.

  —————, and P.J. Kennedy, eds. Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.

  Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928.

  —————. The Future of an Illusion, trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1961.

  Freund, Philip. Myths of Creation. London: Allen & Unwin, 1964.

  Friedman, Michael. Foundations of Space- Time Theories: Relativistic Physics and Philosophy of Science. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983.

  Fritzsch, Harald. The Creation of Matter. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Origin of matter in the early universe.

  Funkenstein, Amos. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Suggests a commonality between theological and scientific thinking by the seventeenth century.

  Gale, Richard M., ed. The Philosophy of Time. Sussex, Eng.: Harvester, 1968. Anthology of historical writings.

  Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, trans. Stillman Drake. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

  —————. Dialogue
s Concerning Two New Sciences, trans. Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.

  —————. The Sidereal Messenger, trans. Edward Stafford Carlos. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1959.

  —————. The Starry Messenger, 1610, in Drake, Stillman, ed. and trans., Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957.