From origins to possibilities

There are certain books that have contributed to who I am. Here is my mentally and editorially filtered list. What other books do you think I should read?

I. Origins

I studied philosophy of biology under militant atheist David Marcey, to whom I owe a great debt. Dr. Marcey is an enthusiastic acolyte of zoologist Richard Dawkins and philosopher Daniel Dennett, whose works I read with equal enthusiasm. I have come to disapprove of Dawkin’s and Dennett’s reductionism, which attempts to apply the criteria and protocols of science in non-scientific categories of belief. However, because these books about the modern evolutionary synthesis have left a permanent mark on my understanding of self and world, I respect them deeply.

1. The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (01986)
2. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett (01995)

II. Culture

How do we begin to make sense of what we feel? There are many ways of addressing life’s big questions, and I have begun to favor some over others. The indispensable books in this category have illuminated my experience as an actual person in actual times and places. The outstanding author here is Jaan Valsiner, who brings old German psychology, pre-Socratic and pragmatist philosophy, and cultural anthropology together in his mind-blowing textbook, Culture and Human Development. The book offers a general framework for understanding moment-to-moment (microgenetic) and long-term (ontogenetic) changes in how humans make sense of everything they encounter, feel, and talk about. The other books illuminate my confrontations with globalism, language, physical objects, plurality, nationhood, competition, cooperation, and urbanism.

1. Culture and Human Development by Jaan Valsiner (02000)
2. Beyond Solidarity by Giles Gunn (02001)
3. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty (01998)
4. Evocative Objects edited by Sherry Turkle (02007)
5. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (01855)
6. Precarious Life by Judith Butler (02004)
7. Games in Economic Development by Bruce Wydick (02007)
8. Who’s Your City? by Richard Florida (02008)

III. Possibilities

As Bruce Schneier explains in Beyond Fear, the particular mode of future-building that has prevailed in the U.S. since September, 02001 is fearful, wasteful, and intellectually impoverished. Schneier offers his readers better mental habits for security decision-making. Next, Bruce Sterling and Daniel Pink invite us to help build a world wherein the practices of humane and beautiful design are more common. Sterling’s and Pink’s design discourses are also a fitting springboard for diving into Yochai Benkler’s manifesto. His book, The Wealth of Networks, urges us to fight the Big Media establishment in order to enable the flourishing of p2p media. Finally, the extraordinary philosopher Richard Rorty gives us his grand vision of U.S. social progress in his deceptively small book, Achieving Our Country.

1. Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier (02003)
2. Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling (02005)
3. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink (02005)
4. The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler (02006)
5. Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty (01998)