About

Ralph Windle’s Blog on Science & The Arts

is about some big, interconnected issues:-

The long-running Arts / Science / Two cultures Debate. Why the old clichés have to STOP...

How Creative Synthesis - the bringing together of separated (Arts/Science?) modes of thought is now top-priority for Innovation...

Most Thumbed

We’ve no ambitions to build a massive bibliography of ( largely unread ) books on the Arts/Science topic; we’re looking for the few which seem to have some special insights or persuasive leverage and which – even in a supposedly shrinking world – may have not yet grabbed our attention.

To start things rolling, here are my own current ‘ Most Thumbed ’ volumes suffering visible wear and tear on my bookshelves.

        What Good Are The Arts?           John Carey              Faber and Faber 2005

        Science: A History                     John Gribbin            Penguin 2002

        Unweaving The Rainbow           Richard Dawkins      Penguin 1998

        Can Poetry Matter?                    Dana Gioia               Graywolf Press 1992
        Essays on Poetry and American Culture

        The Hedgehog, The Fox            Stephen Jay Gould    Three Rivers Press 2003
        and the Magister’s Pox

        Proust Was a Neuro-Scientist    John Lehrer               Houghton Mifflin 2007

        Art Matters                                John Tusa                  Methuen 1999

        The Music of Life                      Denis Noble               Oxford U.P. 2006
        ( Biology Beyond the Genome)

        The Act of Creation                   Arthur Koestler           Pan Piper 1964

        The Heart of Things                  A C Grayling                Orion Books 2006
        (Applying Philosophy to
         The 21st Century)

         Romantic Natural Histories      Ed. Ashton Nichols           Houghton 2004
                                                                                                      Mifflin
         Darwin:  A Life in Poems           Ruth Padel                     Chatto&Windus 2009

         The Two Cultures: A Second      CP Snow                        Cambridge UP 1963
                          Look

         The Age of Wonder                    Richard Holmes                                     2008

          Essays on Contemporary          Ed. Robert Crawford            Oxford U.P. 2006
          Poetryand Contemporary Science

          Ways of Seeing                         John Berger                          Penguin       1972
         A Little History of the World     EH Gombrich                   Yale University 2008
                                                                                                           Press
         Experiment: Conversations       Ed. Bergit Arends             Wellcome Trust:
           In Art and Science                   & Davina Thackara           Sciart Project 2003

        RW