obscure (yet available) gift recommendations

i'd like to get 2 or 3 books for my cousin for christmas; this is way early but yet i'm having trouble thinking of what to get him so help me

my first choice: the tao of physics by fritjof capra... something else that combines maths/science with religion/philosophy would be good

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

by Edwin Abbott

Nooit Meer Slapen ("Beyond Sleep" is the english translation)

by Willem Frederiks Hermans

godel escher bach: an eternal golden braid

by douglas hofstadter

  On 7/25/2010 at 9:05 PM, iep said:

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

by Edwin Abbott

 

Nooit Meer Slapen ("Beyond Sleep" is the english translation)

by Willem Frederiks Hermans

no fiction please... also can anyone recommend some still-relevant masterpieces of critical theory? i thought about maybe a baudrillard

you're doing your cousin a disservice if you rule out flatland because it's 'fiction' - that book is a very useful tool for training yourself to visualise in dimensions higher than three

you could get him a handmade oil replication of the Map of Christian Constellations as depicted by THE Julius Schiller for a a mere few hundred dollarz

  On 7/25/2010 at 9:22 PM, kaini said:

you're doing your cousin a disservice if you rule out flatland because it's 'fiction' - that book is a very useful tool for training yourself to visualise in dimensions higher than three

it's also a useful tool for visualizing sexism in the 19th century lol

I would suggest "the visual display of quantitive information" by Tufte. A truly seminal book, not quite pure science, not quite art, but totally fascinating.

the artful universe by john barrow

I never did finish reading it, but it was pretty interesting stuff.

  Quote

Barrow argues that the laws of the Universe, its environments and its astronomical appearance, have imprinted themselves upon our thoughts and actions in subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we like certain types of art or music? What games and puzzles do we find challenging? Why do so many myths and legends have common elements? Who created the cornucopia of constellations in the night sky? And why? In this eclectic and entertaining survey, Barrow answers these questions and more as he explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Barrow casts the story of human creativity and thought in a fascinating light, considering such diverse topics as our instinct for language, the origins and uses of color in Nature, why we divide time into intervals as we do, the sources of our appreciation of landscape painting, and whether computer-generated fractal art is really art. Barrow reconsiders the question of whether intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, showing that the benefits (and even the likelihood) that might follow from the discovery of life on other worlds could be very different from what we might have been led to expect. Remarkably, we find that some of the properties of the Universe that are essential for the existence of any form of life play a key role in determining psychological and religious responses to the Cosmos.

i jumped the gun and didn't wanna wait for this thread to play out so i went ahead and bought the following three paperbacks for gavin:

nick herbert - quantum reality: beyond the new physics

kurt vonnegut - bluebeard

jean baudrillard - simulacra and simulation (the body, in theory: histories of cultural materialism)

hmm, i'm gonna have to pick up some of these books for myself.