Volume 11
On Crimes and Punishments
Cesare Beccaria
“Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment”
Originally published in 1764, Beccaria’s treatise argued rationally against torture and death in the name of law and order. It was influential throughout Europe, leading to reforms in France and Tuscany.
Its influence is difficult to overstate. A later edition included an anonymous commentary by Voltaire, and translations – such as this one – were widely read by some of the world’s greatest writers and academics: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, William Blackstone, William Eden and Jeremy Bentham, to name a few.
The Sceptical Chymist
Robert Boyle
“It is my intent to beget a good understanding between the chymists and the mechanical philosophers who have hitherto been too little acquainted with one another's learning.”
Published in 1661, many people believe that this book was one of the first to argue in favour of what we now know as modern chemistry, and against the pseudo-science of alchemy. In doing so, Boyle was taking on some of the great historical names in the field we now call the philosophy of science.
The Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis perhaps best summed up the influence the book had:
"After the appearance of The Sceptical Chymist, Aristotle’s doctrine of the four elements, as well as Paracelsus’ theory of the three principia, gradually passes into disuse."
Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Albert Einstein
“I make no pretence of having withheld from the reader difficulties which are inherent to the subject. On the other hand, I have purposely treated the empirical physical foundations of the theory in a “step-motherly” fashion, so that readers may not feel like the wanderer who was unable to see the forest for the trees.”
A layman’s introduction to Einstein’s ideas, Relativity gives readers an insight into the ideas of one of the best known – and one of the most influential – scientists in history.
The ideas explained herein turned Einstein into a cultural icon, earned him a Nobel Prize and revolutionised modern physics. Few ideas in history can claim to have had such a scientific and cultural impact on human life.
Micrographia
Robert Hooke
“The Reason of making Experiments is, for the Discovery of the Method of Nature, in its Progress and Operations.”
Micrographia is a landmark in human literature; the first book to include illustrations of organisms (such as insects and plants) through microscopes; the first major book released by the Royal Society; the first pop-science book (definitely the first bestseller in science). And, perhaps most surprisingly, the book that first used the term ‘cell’.
“The most ingenious book that ever I read in my life."
Samuel Pepys
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume
“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”
The book that famously woke Kant from his "dogmatic slumber", Hume’s 1748 work was an early version of pop-science in action.
Hume believed that his anonymously published A Treatise of Human Nature had “fell dead-born from the press” in 1739-1740, so he redeveloped, reworked and republished a shorter version, which he believed to be the important bits, and called it An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. It was published in 1748, and is still a classic of modern philosophical thought.
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Isaac Newton
“I have presented principles of philosophy that are not, however, philosophical but strictly mathematical—that is, those on which the study of philosophy can be based.”
Translated from the classic text Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which was originally published in Latin in 1687. Such is its influence, the book is often referred to simply as the Principia. The text – alongside its numerous, historically important diagrams – formed the foundation of classical mechanics, Newton’s law of universal gravitation and a derivation of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
The French mathematical physicist Alexis Clairaut summed up the influence of the book in 1747 by saying Principia was:
“The epoch of a great revolution in physics. The method followed by its illustrious author... spread the light of mathematics on a science which up to then had remained in the darkness of conjectures and hypotheses."
The Age of Reason
Thomas Paine
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
The Age of Reason is Paine’s masterpiece which argued for deism, challenging systemic religion and the rule of the Bible as law.
A bestseller in the US, it brought deistic arguments to the masses. A true pop-philosophy title which inspired millions and guided many great thinkers. In 2006, the late Christopher Hitchens argued that The Age of Reason was still one of the most useful titles around 200 years after it was published:
“In a time... when both rights and reason are under several kinds of open and covert attack, the life and writing of Thomas Paine will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend.”