12 Essential Scientific Concepts – The Great Courses

Anyone who engages these texts will either revolutionize their worldview to a more accurate picture of the universe around us; or at the very least will have his/her worldview fleshed out with most of the major contours that direct our lives.

1. Cosmos – Niel DeGrass Tyson or Carl Sagan (TV Show)
2. A Theory of Everything – Ken Wilber (Book)
3. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson (Audio Book)
4. The Great Ideas of Psychology – The Great Courses (Audio Lectures)
5. 12 Essential Scientific Concepts – The Great Courses (Audio Lectures)

Why these five pieces of information are so powerful in enhancing our big picture view:

Anyone who hasn’t read, listened to, or watched these four pieces of information should short track them to the top of the reading and watching list. Personally, I would recommend these different works be taken in through different mediums for optimal benefits.

12. Essential Scientific Concepts: The Great Courses – Last but not least, this course takes us a bit more deeply into those aspects of science that any well-informed student of mastery should understand. Different to both Cosmos or Bryson’s theory of everything, this series focuses on the subjects themselves. Having listened to the others will give us an idea of how these different areas work, but this series gives us more of the nuts and bolts within each field.

Mostly, this is the icing on the cake of this project to develop and accurate and useful model of the universe around us. It fills in the details of some areas that we might have gleaned over. It gives us an orientation of the specific factors most important to the 12 scientific concepts that are most critical to our lives. The information presented here is gold.

Limitations – Like Cosmos and Bryson’s work, these lectures focus on the hard sciences. That’s an excellent strength of this as it will help all of us better understand the how reality works all around and within us. It doesn’t even consider psychology or sociology, but that’s why this list presents multiple texts to flesh out a more comprehensive picture of everything.

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