And it makes my brain hurt

A book I read recently that really made me think is "The Little Book of AI theist Spirituality" by Andre' Comte-Sponville. As I have come to accept and be comfortable in my atheism, I have been thinking more and more about spirituality. I never thought spirituality was the exclusive domain of religion, and this book helped me better appreciate that.

Also two recent books I've read, "The Chomsky Reader" edited by James Peck, and "Understanding Power The Indispensable Chomsky edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, really have made me think about my perceptions of the US economy, government, politics, social life, and the mass media. Wether you agree with any or all of Noam Chomsky's views, you will have to admit he makes you think. He challenges you to challenge the information offered to us by the power structures in the USA.

Anything regarding quantum physics. I have always been interested in the theory (at least what I think the theory is) but even when reading books geared at teenagers about the basics. I Just Can't Get It!!

It's like my brain turns into mush and the words fail to have any meaning.

I'm part of the way through "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality", by Brian Greene, and it has some pretty good informatin about quantum physics. Not too technical and I can almost understand it. I really don't have the math background to understand it fully, but I think it's very interesting.

Try The Critique of Pure Reason if you're after brain pain. Right from the bit in the introduction where Kant says he took most of the planned examples out, confident capable readers wouldn't need them. The man taunts us...

#5: Oh yes, Kant for sure. Even the shorter works like Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals or Prolegomena to any future metaphysics make my brain hurt. But for me Hegel is much worse. Philosophy of right nearly finished me off for good; I could (and often did) spend six hours reading twenty pages for class and have absolutely no idea what he was saying, and still be no clearer after the class discussion. I grew to despise the man for his arrogance. What a nightmare that summer was!

I also submit a vote for Hegel.

If you enjoy numbing your brain, this book is hard to beat. Very few have read it from cover to cover. As Dr Johnson is said to have said of Paradise Lost, "No man could wish it longer." (I will admit that my prurient interest was sparked by the reference to "normal deviates" -- what could they be? Is it not a contradiction in terms? Secretly-homosexual scoutmasters, perhaps?-- but I was bitterly disappointed.)

I vote for Hegel, too, especially the Logic and the mack-daddy, Phenomenology of Spirit. I'll throw in Negative Dialectics by Theodor Adorno, which is a meta-critique of Hegel and Kant with a heavy dose of Heidegger. Being and Time almost brought me to tears, or what Samuel Beckett called "liquid brains".

You know i've thought about quantum physics for a while. watch "down the rabbit hole" and "what the bleep do we know" -it almost seems that the less you think about it the easier it is to comprehend, I know, sounds wierd.