Natural Science Overview and History

Natural Science is the branch of science that studies all phenomena except those dependent on the action of man's conceptual consciousness.

• Milestones of Science by Curt Suplee. A survey of major figures and discoveries in science, with obvious admiration and understanding of their significance as well as science's dependence on rationality and the inductive method. It has lavish and fascinating photographs.
• The Ascent of Man by J. Bronowski. The development of man from primitive beginnings through his greatest achievments.
• The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin. A History of Man's Search to Know his World and Himself.
• Longitude, The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel. The heroic saga of John Harrison, who finally solved the problem of determining longitude at sea and thereby opened up the world to safe navigation and trade. (more:
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• Seeing and Believing by Richard Panek. The history of man's search to understand the heavens and an illustration of the development and progress of scientific knowledge. (more:
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• Newton's Gift, How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World by David Berlinski. Newton was the preeminent figure in modern science. Indeed, his achievements in science impelled the enlightenment by giving spectacular evidence of the efficacy of Aristotelean reason as against the poverty of religious and Platonic mysticism.
• Galileo's Commandment, 2,500 Years of Great Science Writing by Edmund Blair Bolles, editor. An inspiring compendium of histories of great scientists, their discoveries, and, above all, the intellectual process they employ. This book illustrates the nature and power of exacting, rational, scientific thought.
• The Monk in the Garden by Robin Marantz Henig. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) performed a brilliant series of experiments that integrated mathematics with biology and discovered the mechanism by which heredity and evolution operate. (more:
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• The Autobiography of Charles Darwin by Charles Darwin. This biography is excellent both as literature and as insight into the ideas and thinking methods of the great scientist.
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman by Richard Feynmann. Feynman demonstrates his characteristic brilliance and enthusiasm in these wide-ranging essays, always approaching each subject first-hand.

Links

• Junk Science – A general science site: much-needed articles debunking contemporary psuedo-science.
• Longitude – The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time