Monday, April 29, 2013

Reading List

After seeing the shockingly bad reading list for the Ball State course purporting to be about the "boundaries of science" but being totally just ID/creationism, I started thinking of which books I would recommend as the counterbalance to his creationist/ID list for undergrads.  This is what I've come up with.  Any suggestions?

Coyne.  Why Evolution is True

Darwin.  On the Origin of Species

Dawkins.  The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Dawkins.  The Selfish Gene

Festinger & Carlsmith.  "Cognitive Dissonance" (article)

Hawking.  A Brief History of Time

Krauss.  A Universe from Nothing

Mills.  Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism

Sagan.  A Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Shermer.  How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God

Shermer.  Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design

Sokal.  Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture

Stenger.  God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist

Tyson.  Origins:  Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

3 comments:

devilsadvok8 said...

Eugenie C. Scott-Evolution vs Creationism
Excellent starter since it presents both sides of the argument....and thoroughly takes creationism down.

LadyAtheist said...

Good one! Could be the textbook for such a course, too

Anonymous said...

There should be something describing the scientific method and frequentism as approximations/special cases of Bayesianism.