I’m looking for the popular science books that are adequate from the Marxist point of view or don’t go in that field at all. Like, “Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind” is recommended everywhere, but I think someone here on lemmygrad wrote that it has questionable moments. I read in English and Russian. Any kind of science will do. Thanks!
I haven’t read any science books except two.
“Not in Our Genes” by Lewontin et al was very good. It is a bit old but wise beyond its years on the topic of how the mainstream foray into genetics was often a cudgel to reinforce classist, racist, etc. biological determinist ideas.
Then there was a book related to covid that was published by Monthly Review. It helped open my eyes about how factory farming of animals creates conditions that are conducive to the evolution of deadly pathogens. But it was just a collection of related essays that had a common theme but were not converging towards a specific point so I didn’t find it memorable. The writing was pretty dramatic (not in a good way). As such I can’t recall the book’s title.
Pop science books are usually oversimplified to the point of being useless. Sapiens is warm trash juice for example.
Edit: I have also read The Selfish Gene by Dick Dawkins. Its hypothesis is that the gene is the basic unit of natural selection is IMO very interesting. I wonder if it has influenced natural sciences in some way but I don’t know how to check that. The book is also historic for coining the term “meme”.
Thank you! Sounds interesting