The Origin of Species

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1. gobdovanJun 2026
   They did have immense networks and were constantly communicating with one another. In On the Origin of Species, I was amazed how Darwin basically knew all the top breeders and naturists form South America, Arab Gulf, Oceania, which he mentions by name. He mentions his peers from the first page in the introduction and the correspondence and responses he got from them.

   There's not many geniuses without an ecosystem around them that produced them. And even if there are, how would we know about them if they weren't well connected enough to start mattering?

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2. boxedFeb 2025
   You should read On the Origin of Species. He handled all your objections there.

   Spoiler warning: Darwin didn't really have any problems with the eye. That's just something creationists say.

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3. xhevahirOct 2023
   What? Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is one of the most important books in the history of Western thought. Saying that "even in France no one longer reads this" is like saying that The Origin of Species is irrelevant because one never sees passengers reading it on the London Tube.
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4. abecedariusOct 2023
   Darwin is far more readable than any of the others you mention.

   Possibly Mein Kampf could compete in short passages by a "reading difficulty" score, but it's really tedious and much longer (by a factor of 5!). Darwin could actually write. Origin of Species was intended for the educated public as well as for scientists.

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5. AngosturaSep 2023
   On the other hand, some of Darwin's original treatise - Origin of species of species in particular, is well worth a read.
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6. cs702May 2023
   Off the cuff, here are a couple of textbooks not yet mentioned elsewhere on this page (so far):

   * "An Introduction to Statistical Learning" by James, Witte, Hastie, and Tibshirani: possibly the best intro to the topic I've seen.

   * "Introduction to Linear Algebra" by Gilbert Strang: possibly the best intro to the topic I've seen.

   Also, here are some books that are not properly textbooks but could be used as such:

   * "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" by Hans Moravec: remarkably prescient, in hindsight.

   * "On the Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin: I was surprised at how readable it is.

   * "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins: It made me question a lot about a lot.

   * "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker: I was shocked at the violence in our past.

   * "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Doug Hofstadter: an intellectual tour de force.

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