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1 Einsteinâs Dice and Schrödingerâs Cat: How two great minds battled quantum randomness to create a unified theory of physics, Paul Halpern, Basic Books
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In the centenary of general relativity, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger are celebrated in a book framing the contributions of both: Einstein for his theories of relativity, the photoelectric effect and his explanation of Brownian motion; Schrödinger for his wave equations explaining quantum objectsâ behaviour. Unusually, Paul Halpern also looks at their post-glory days, when the two spent longer on fruitless attempts to unify quantum physics and relativity than on their breakthroughs.
2 Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli, Allen Lane
Feeling daunted by even attempting to scale Mount Einstein? This Italian bestseller, now translated into English, may be for you. Physicist Carlo Rovelli pulls off the trick of vividly capturing everything from elementary particles to dark matter in 78 pages. Itâs not just for novices: there are also heady pages on loop quantum gravity.
3 The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?, Nick Lane, Profile
No physics envy here, just biology vast in scope and ambition, brimming with bold ideas and questions. They donât get much bigger than these: why did complex cells evolve just the once, how did life first evolve, what would life be like on other planets, why do we age? This is incredible, epic stuff, beautifully done and likely to transform the way we look at the world.
4 How to Clone a Mammoth: The science of de-extinction, Beth Shapiro, Princeton University Press
This is big biology too, but big in the most literal sense. Beth Shapiroâs âhow-toâ manual couldnât be more timely given the news that mammoth genes were cloned in living elephant cells earlier this year. She lobs a few ethical grenades too: where will the new beasts live? Why do it at all? Thatâs easy â everyone loves mammoths and the idea of de-extinction.
âWhy clone mammoths at all? Thatâs easy â everyone loves mammoths and the idea of de-extinctionâ
5 Beyond Words: What animals think and feel, Carl Safina, Henry Holt
If you like your animals living rather than re-created, then Beyond Words challenges you to rethink how we relate to Earthâs other creatures. It is a fresh report from the field, detailing what animals do, how they are studied in the wild, and what it âfeelsâ like to be them. This is essential reading for a deeper understanding of life and cognition on Earth.
6 The Man Who Wasnât There: Investigations into the strange new science of the self, Anil Ananthaswamy, Dutton
Some people think that they are dead, others that their limbs are alien, and still others that they have a doppelgĂ€nger. This world is far from the one in which we sit comfortably within our bodies, taking a sense of self for granted. Anil Ananthaswamy, a consultant for żìĂš¶ÌÊÓÆ”, looks at how a brain trying to make predictive sense of conflicting internal and external signals tells us a lot about âmaladies of the selfâ. An excellent if unnerving book: âyouâ turn out to be more fluid than âyouâ thought.
7 How to See the World, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Pelican
In our fluid world, we need reminding how strange our visual culture has become. Artist John Berger did that job for the 1970s with his classic book Ways of Seeing; now Nicholas Mirzoeff teaches us how to âreadâ an astronautâs 2012 space-walk selfie â and how to decode military photos smothered with labels that claim to show weapons we cannot in fact see.
8 The Future of the Professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts, Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, Oxford University Press
The latest in a slew of accounts of an automated future, in which machine learning algorithms stalk the land, human values are optional and Big Data has replaced Big Brother. The Susskinds, a father and son team, take on the âtransformationâ of the professions. What they see is doctors, teachers and lawyers becoming guides-on-the-side rather than sages-on-the-stage. But they would prefer a type of commons where our collective knowledge and experience âis nurtured and shared without commercial gainâ.
9 The Age of Sustainable Development, Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University Press
With the Paris climate talks a few hours away, itâs worth remembering the clear agenda laid out by guru of sustainable development, Jeffrey Sachs. For him, it combines managing the planet so as not to destroy it for our children and understanding the world as a âcomplex interaction of economic, social, environmental and political systemsâ, with an ethical view that ensures the well-being of its citizens. Optimistic â heroic even â but will it be enough?
10 Mixed Messages: Cultural and genetic inheritance in the constitution of human society, Robert A. Paul, University of Chicago Press
Most of the time our genes and culture both work to enhance our survival, but in this riveting book Robert Paul argues that our genetic and cultural inheritances are often in conflict. His exploration takes us from the Mbaya people of South America to the fundamentalist Shaker people in the US to Japanâs kamikaze pilots. Who are we really? Robots controlled by our genes or robots of our cultures? Read this book to find out.
11 Scientific Babel: The language of science from the fall of Latin to the rise of English, Michael Gordin, Profile Books
English is the universal language of science â but it wasnât always so. Latin, German, French, Russian, Esperanto and Ido all crashed out along the way. But as Michael Gordin discovers in his excellent exploration into what drives the languages science uses, there was nothing innately superior about English, no one reason for its dominance. Will its domination continue?
12 Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the reinvention of seeing, Laura J. Snyder, W. W. Norton
Two 17th-century giants, scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and artist Johannes Vermeer, are the subjects of Laura J. Snyderâs enthralling joint biography. This is the story of how both were fascinated with visual perception, âemploying optical instruments as âartificial eyesâ to supplement the natural organsâ â Van Leeuwenhoek building 500 single-lens microscopes that could magnify objects 450-fold, Vermeer using observation through lenses to craft his paintings â and how both transformed the way we perceive the world.
(Image: Adam Hirons/Millennium Images, UK)
Like this? Read about the best books, films and art of 2015 as picked by the staff at żìĂš¶ÌÊÓÆ”