Forms of life, forms of mind

Here are some books I especially recommend. There are many others, some of which I’ve posted on Twitter when I was going one by one through some bookshelves at home and posting the covers and table of contents. Here’s also a Goodreads list by Federico Lanzani.

• Binet, A. (1888). The Psychic Life of Micro-organisms: A Study in Experimental Psychology. Chicago, Open Court Publishing Company.
• James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2. New York, NY, Henry Holt & Company.
• Bateson, W. (1894). Materials For The Study Of Variation Treated With Especial Regard To Discontinuity In The Origin Of Species. London, New York, MacMillan and Company.
• Jennings, H. S. (1906). Behavior of the Lower Organisms. New York, NY, Columbia University Press.
• Washburn, M. F. (1908). The Animal Mind: A Textbook Of Comparative Psychology. New York, NY, The MacMillan Company.
• Huxley, J. S. and G. R. de Beer (1934). The Elements of Experimental Embryology. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Russell, E. S. (1945). The Directiveness of Organic Activities. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Waddington, C. H. (1956). Principles of Embryology. New York, NY, The MacMillen Company.
• Bernard, C. (1957). An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. New York, NY, Dover Publications, Inc.
• Waddington, C. H. (1957). The Strategy of the Genes: A Discussion of Some Aspects of Theoretical Biology. London, Allen & Unwin.
• Ashby, W. R. (1960). Design for a Brain: The Origin of Adaptive Behavior. London, UK, Chapman & Hall Limited.
• Bonner, J. T. (1962). The Ideas of Biology. New York, NY, Harper & Brothers.
• McConnell, J. V. (1965). The Worm Re-Turns: The Best from the Worm Runner’s Digest. Hoboken, NJ, Prentice-Hall.
• Burr, H. S. (1972). Blueprint for Immortality: The Electric Patterns of Life. C. W. Daniel.
• Bonner, J. T. (1974). On Development: The Biology of Form. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
• Gazzaniga, M. S. and J. E. LeDoux (1978). The Integrated Mind. New York, NY, Plenum Press.
• Piaget, J. (1978). Behavior and evolution. New York, NY, Pantheon Books.
• Hofstadter, D., (1979), Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. NY, Vintage Books.
• Maturana, H. R. and F. J. Varela (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company.
• Prigogine, I. (1980). From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. San Francisco, CA, W. H. Freeman.
• Pietsch, P. (1981). Shuffle Brain: The Quest for the Holgramic Mind. Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Keller, E. F. (1983). A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. San Francisco, CA, W. H. Freeman.
• Oyama, S. (1985). The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Loewenstein, W. R. (1990). The Touchstone of Life: Molecular Information, Cell Communication, and the Foundations of Life. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Thompson, D. A. W. (1992). On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Kauffman, S. A. (1993). The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Kauffman, S. (1995). At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Smith, J. M. and E. Szathmáry (1999). The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press.
• Goodwin, B. (2001). How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
• Turner, J. S. (2002). The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
• West-Eberhard, M. J. (2003). Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press.
• Rosen, R. (2005). Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry Into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life. New York, NY, Columbia University Press.
• Jablonka, E. and M. J. Lamb (2006). Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press.
• Wagner, A. (2007). Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
• Bray, D. (2009). Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell. New Haven, London, Yale University Press.
• Turner, J. S. (2010). The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
• von Uexküll, J. J. (2010). A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: with A Theory of Meaning. Minneapolis, London, University of Minnesota Press.
• Wagner, A. (2011). The Origins of Evolutionary Innovations: A Theory of Transformative Change in Living Systems. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press.
• Pattee, H. H. and J. Rączaszek-Leonardi (2012). Laws, Language and Life: Howard Pattee’s classic papers on the physics of symbols with contemporary commentary. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London, Springer.
• Wagner, A. (2014). Arrival of the Fittest: How Nature Innovates. New York, NY, Penguin Random House.
• Noble, D. (2017). Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Ball, P. (2023). How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Happy reading!