Extra Reading Recommendations

This is a list of philosophy-adjacent books that don't typically get covered in classes, but are invaluable nonetheless. Most authors are either philosophers or sensitive to philosophical concerns. These books are typically more expository and less argumentative, explaining how developments in other areas can benefit our understanding of philosophical concepts such as reasoning and causation.

The Model Thinker

Scott E. Page (2018)

This book does two things: First, it explains the concept of many model thinking in which a thinker utilizes a library of models (never just one) to understand real world dynamics and events. Second, it provides a library of models to do so. After reading, the book serves as a toolbelt of models that can be used to analyze countless situations across essentially any domain.

The Book of Why

Judea Pearl & Dana Mackenzie (2018)

"Correlation is not causation!" Yeah, we know... So then, what is causation? Traditional statistics has nervously shied away from this question in favor of merely recording data and their relationships. In this book, Judea Pearl discusses the Causal Revolution which he and his students began only a few decades ago. Pearl's approach to causation provides mathematical rigor to concepts that for centuries have been plagued with paradox, and as a result, has significantly impacted the worlds of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman (2011)

A known staple for anyone interested in understanding thinking, whether in general or their own. Kahneman famously introduces the distinction between the two titular types of thinking and explains the benefits and limitations of both. Understanding them provides the reader with a better understanding of their own thought processes as well as others.

Superintelligence

Nick Bostrom (2014)

Bostrom is one of the world's leading experts on ethical and existential considerations of AI. This book provides a strong start to understanding how a superintelligence (AI that exponentially increases in power beyond humans) can occur and the various considerations to be had throughout this process.

The Theory That Would Not Die

Sharon McGrayne (2011)

P(H|E)=P(E|H)*P(H)/P(E), also known as Bayes' Theorem, holds a special place in many people's heart. They are known as Bayesians. To those people, the theorem simultaneously solves some of the deepest mysteries of philosophy, dissolves paradoxes in the foundations of science, and describes how a thinking mind ought to deal with evidence. And while not everyone agrees on these philosophical points, no one denies the practical impact of Bayes' Theorem on virtually every discipline that concerns statistics. However Bayes' Theorem had trouble ever coming to light. McGrayne explores the real history behind it, and how it had to prove its mettle in the most real world scenario possible: World War II.

The God Particle

Leon Lederman with Dick Teresi (1993)

Since Oppenheimer (2023) reminded us that we are all physicists in our spare time, you might be left needing to scratch the itch of engaging material coupled with a legitimate explanation of some of the most important and hardest concepts in physics. The Nobel laureate Lederman is not only an expert on the topic but also in the accessibility of his writing. Yes, by the end, you will understand why the Higgs boson is so important, and you won't have to do any math.

Life

Richard Fortey (1998)

It's not uncommon for math and computer science focused people to ignore biology, or worse, demean it as an arbitrary recording of sloppy facts. However biology offers some of the most fascinating theoretical challenges - as well as tools for dealing with them - which turn out to be invaluable across all disciplines. Forty retraces the four billion year history of life on Earth in remarkable clarity, and in doing so reveals some of the most beautiful features of evolution. The reader is left with a deeper understanding of the natural world around them, as well as what "random" really means.

The Knowledge Machine

Michael Strevens (2020)

Strevens rejects the picture of the history of science as an ideal process of cleanly stated problems, and well-encompassing solutions. He goes well beyond the fact that science is built on failures, and observes the role that full irrationality has played in the process, calling it "strategic". He explores the foundational assumptions of the scientific process that have not stood the test of time and those that have. The book offers a realistic picture how science how become what it is and where it is heading now.

Logicomix

Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos Papadimitriou, with Alekos Papadatos (2008)

Mathematics was in an existential crisis. At the turn of the 20th century, mathematicians were panicking that their entire enterprise, the very field of mathematics, might crumble as a result of its own devises. Logicomix is a fun-to-read, semi-biographical graphic novel that traces the efforts of Bertrand Russell to build foundations of mathematics in logic while guarding against paradoxes. The results of his and others' efforts is not only a firm foundation of mathematics, but the building blocks for modern computers.

If A, Then B

Michael Shenefelt & Heidi White

Critical thinking is forged out of necessity, and this is just as true for the panicle of critical thinking: formal logic. Shenefelt & White trace the history of logic from its discovery in Ancient Greece to its underpinning of modern computing. This book is an easy read that helps tie together historical, philosophical, and practical matters to provide the reader a more well-rounded grasp of perhaps the most important science there is.

"[...] Hence, once more, the value of philosophy must not depend upon any supposed body of definitely ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by those who study it."The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect."Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy has a value—perhaps its chief value—through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife."
Bertrand Russell,
The Problems of Philosophy (1912),
Chapter XV, The Value of Philosophy

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