Reproducible empirical demonstration by despised and undeserving
discoverers.  

Kary Mullis won a 1993 Nobel Prize subsequent to a boring
late-night drive down Highway 128 to Anderson Valley (Mendocino
County, CA) in April 1983.  Millis got a $10K bonus for his
invention.  Cetus sold his PCR patent to Hoffman-LaRoche for
$300,000,000.

I'd say a 0.0033% bonus was a bit slim, wouldn't you?  "despised
and undeserving"

"Our Lady of the Flowers" Jean Genet

"The Story of O"  Uncle Al is fond of tethered owls.
 

I once hired a tech straight from UC/Irvine, dual Honors BS in
Chemistry and Biology, the best of a disappointing lot.  Said
hire had never seen a dual stage gas regulator or Swagelock
fittings.  That is your list.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf

None.  My understanding of science has evolved slowly, from numerous
sources and personal experiences.  It's shuffled and stumbled forward as I
slowly grasp concepts on the fourth attempt at general relativity,
fifth attempt at quantum field theory, or whatever.  There are certainly
some very good and useful books, but I can't say I've read any that, as
you say, have totally changed the way I look at the world and at science.

Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions  (a MUST given your topic!!)
Koestler, The Watershed
de La Mettrie, Man a Machine

Scott

Callen's "Thermodynamics" is certainly novel, different and under
appreciated. It certainly is orthogonal to traditional approaches. It
is not written in a manner for someone who is just learning thermo,
but rather for someone already familiar with the subject and who would
gain from a new viewpoint.

Much of modern science is not done by writing books, but rather by
publishing research articles. It takes many researchers, many articles
and many years for a new field to develop, such as with fractals,
chaos (non-linear dynamics), ... You can certainly point out seminal
papers, (usually with hindsight) but it is seldom that a researchers
writes a tome that initially sets off a new field.  They only example
that I can think of in that vein is Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science",
which I have not read.

John

Do weblinks count?  Here is one I read a lot because I was a real estate
investor for a time.

http://www.hoyt.org/monograph1.pdf

The first group of people, and there are really three groups to whom I want
to communicate, is composed of academics. These are people who are in the
business of developing and disseminating knowledge, although some would
prefer to call it a profession. How the professor treats his or her career
is what makes the difference. The second group of people includes the
recipients of the knowledge, particularly the thought leaders who develop
policy for managing enterprises ? public as well as private.

The Age of Enlightenment moved reason to the forefront of decision-making.
But, the pendulum swung so far that emotion gets short shrift, and
intolerance put an end to the Enlightenment. Irrational exuberance and
other aspects of human nature may take us where we don?t want to go. So, we
need a better understanding of the system. Academia is charged with
providing that knowledge, but the structure and incentives are not working
as well as they should. Part of the problem is that we keep breaking down
the areas of knowledge into disciplines, but devote too little attention to
interdisciplinary approaches. While discipline focus is a good way to
develop better understanding of some parts of the system, when one has an
issue with which to deal, it may be critical to draw on multiple,
preferably integrated, disciplines. Furthermore, there are some underlying
principles that apply to many disciplines so that we could do a better job
in our specializations if we expanded our breadth of knowledge. Strategy is
a critical part of dealing with issues. So, if one is really good at
strategy, one can make good decisions in a variety of areas provided some
basic facts are obtained and an appropriate strategy applied. Furthermore,
if a critical point towards a trend is reached, then there may be a
cascading effect, i.e., others may follow the shift to more relevant
research and better decisions. That?s the story. I recall that 45 years
ago, as a doctoral student, I was told along with my classmates in a Money
and Banking class, by Professor Cleveland, that if we really understood
this one sentence, ?The quantity of money theory holds under conditions
much more restrictive than required by its advocates, and a fortiori its
critics,? we should just come back in fourteen weeks when we will spend two
weeks on another book. It was a rigorous fourteen weeks. Not every reader
interested in the ideas is interested in the rigor of my analysis, such as
it is. Indeed, the development of the ideas is rather loose. But a wide
array of literature is referred to, and is important in supporting the
development of the ideas. In order to make it easier to read, especially
for the second and third groups, I have used a style of including boxed
text that may be skipped over when one is just looking for the line of
reasoning being developed. For those not prepared to accept at face value
the statements in the line of reasoning, elaboration is provided, usually
using quotations. Thus, the book may be used as a point of departure for
further study of the ideas that are put together to build the theme. The
second group, ??the recipients of the knowledge, particularly the thought
leaders who develop policy for managing enterprises, public as well as
private,? includes those business leaders who are interested in influencing
academic research efforts to produce knowledge relevant to the issues that
they face. In the area of finance, Wall Street has been a great benefactor
of relevant research coming out of academia. The applicability of research
has influenced academics in selection of topics. I am not referring to
consulting assignments, but rather to basic and applied research that
enhances the understanding of the system in a way that becomes the basis
for engineering a solution. The difference between basic and applied is
that the basic has a longer time dimension and the application is not
known. The engineering of a solution, if it develops a new process, is
applied research. If it simply applies a developed process, it is
consulting.
viii
The idea with this second group is to bridge the gap between industry and
academia. This is one of the primary goals pursued by the Homer Hoyt
Institute through its support of the Advanced Studies Institute in Real
Estate and Land Economics and with its creation of the Hoyt Fellows. The
third group, which includes philanthropists, also includes foundations. The
Homer Hoyt Institute is such a foundation. In its 35-year history, it has
switched from being a grant-receiving organization to becoming a grant-
giving organization. It has a track record of doing what is advocated in
this book, and it certainly would welcome support for expanding research
projects as advocated in this book. But it would also be pleased if the
example set by the Hoyt Institute?s approach were applied to other
disciplines. Because of this broader interest, the major audience for this
book is social scientists, irrespective of discipline. Examples are drawn
from real estate because that is what we, at the Institute, have been doing
for more than a third of a century. The application to other disciplines is
a big subject. As a start, the issue of terrorism has been selected to be
an issue to which the concepts discussed may be applied, or more
accurately, a case that can draw from many disciplines, including real
estate. It happens to highlight a key area of study relating to decision-
making. That area is the influence of cultural differences on decisions ?
and it merits a plurality approach. The plurality concept is as value-laden
as is the perspective of the system. The capsule summary is that Rousseau
had it right when he saw a common set of arrangements as a social contract.
The problem was an absolute set for all on a scale that did not allow for
societal differences. Dealing with differences is a major issue, whether it
is dealing with terrorists or the investors who have the irrational
exuberance that drives our security markets to fiascos.

A work, I went through college, I was exposed to the standard education
there, standard philosophers - most of the concepts I had encountered
through SCI FI tv shows as a child or cartoons even - I have forgotten most
of the cartoons - not Akira -  but I still have very vivid memories of the
science fiction shows.  When I was younger I read future shock by alvin
toffler, spiritual machines by kurzweil, but my cultural references in star
trek and other scifi tv shows and movies are where my memories and my heart
lies on a whole host of science and politics and economy.  I like
entertaining education, entertaining exposure to new ideas, some of the
concepts in these tv shows I did not understand or see real world relevance
until I got older and identical things happened in my real world
experience.  I always look for the multimedia version of information, I
would rather watch a movie or tv show than read a book.  The internet is
invaluable in my exploration of new ideas though.  I would rather engage in
active commentary with sci.econers than go back and read the archives for
the past 10 years.  Just not as FUN, seems like a DEAD thing, talking day
to day is a living thing and reading 5 year old archives seems dead.  I
accept I lose out on good stores of knowledge but hope to LEARN that same
knowledge through my discussions - I had a poet buddy who read poetry, then
he started travelling the world and living it, he said you need to live
these books, not read them, not as easy to learn that way.

Marvin Minsky and others give some good ideas but I am always falling back
on things that touched me emotionally, the first time I heard some vangelis
or watched blade runner, 1984 was a good book, but I liked watching Blake's
7 for my consumption of orwellian ideals and rewatch it today for it's
hilarity and entertainment value.  The prisoner with Mcgoohan was good too.

The movie the Usual Suspects although not scifi touched my heart as well.

Below is my list. I would be grateful for your

Never heard of it, went to amazon and read up on it, not something I think
I will buy.

Well if that is what those books represent, unknowns, why are they unknown?  
They were tucked away on some bookshelf and never exposed to popular
culture, movies need to be made, tv shows etc.  If the sharing of thier
memes never reached a critical mass there must be some problem to the flow
of thier memes - too hard, to convulated, not entertaining, like the flow
of a virus, it lived in just a few hosts and never jumped to too many other
people in the world - why? - why isn't the virus spreading in these
undiscovered Gems?  The people that write them are vague and not popular,
the people that read them try to get the message out and the masses do not
chomp down on the material,  I took philosophy courses in college, with a
very good professor, but I dont remember those courses much, I remember the
same concepts taught in the episodes of star trek I watched.  Its like the
confederacy of dunces, people kept telling me to read it, that it was
hilarious, I believe them, I have read about it on amazon, I heard wil
farrell was going to be in a new movie about it, and when he his I will
watch the movie, but I am not going to read the book.  Too lazy I guess.

For instance, Aristotle, Plato, and Darwin will

Think what they could have done in getting their message to the masses with
modern day internet and a hollywood studio or PBS behind them?  Think if
they had the cast of MAd TV to teach some of thier lessons, many people
would watch it and laugh and learn.  Homer may have wrote a good book in
the Iliad, but the movie Troy will be where my memories and visualization
stay.

Read about it just now on Amazon, have read some robert rosen that amazon
said was like Rene Thom, didnt keep up with Robert Rosen when I read some
of his stuff 10 years ago.  I do still watch PBS and Nova and the SCIENCE
channel though - just don't read books much with that kind of medium in my
house.

Never heard of them either, read about them on amazon, it does not motivate
me to buy thier book or even go to the library if the book is free, if
however I am watching Nova or the Science channel and they come on I will
listen to them and try to learn.  If Dennis Miller or Jon Stewart started
dropping thier name I might have been exposed more.  Without this list I
would probably have never looked them up, after looking them up I still
have no incentive to keep up with them.  The meme touched me, and I am not
going to pass it on.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/EPISTEM.html

Here is a website I am reading now - you have any you can share?

Well, it's probably not the direction you are intending, but
a truly foundational work is:

_Green Eggs and Ham_ By Dr. Seuss, ISBN: 0394800168.

The fundamental message of this book is the first
introduction of many people to the empirical method.
The hero didn't like green eggs and ham until he
actually *tried* them. Then he liked them.
Socks

Sorry! But you waste your time. All and anything has been said, even on
the role of the underdog in the lab (cf. de Sola Price on the role of
low-ranking technicians in great discoveries, e.g. the supporting of the
Michelson interferometer with a mercury bath).

Who remembers the name of the inventor of the electrical dynamo (Zenobe
Gramme), or of the stationary gas engine, or of the electrical brake.

Science progresses both with Supermen (Ortega y Gasset model), who
synthesize a whole domain (ex.: Langmuir), AND with obscure plodders who
add a little pebble to the building (innumerable examples).

J.J.