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Outside Physics

 

 

This is a page devoted to my interests besides Physics. This is a platform to find similar interests and keep track of my devotions.

 Last Update  22 November 2024

In order to see what I am reading now or what I just finished the reading of it, you can look at my Instragram page.

Maybe the most favored of mine outside the physics is liteature. Where you  investigate the Human Souls, the Complexity of Life with its all twists, with its all uncertainties, with all its magic.   Lets name my favored authors and their books by catagory in below:

Novels and Plays:

In below please find 92 novels and plays that are my favorites, and also  lists No. 1 , No. 2  and No. 3 of Honorable mentions, which comes after the favorites respectively. The  lists will be expanded and modified obviously by reading and also rereading the literary masterpieces.

Faust by Goethe (1808), Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813), Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856), The Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1860),  Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1862), The Crime and Punishment by  Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866),  War and Peace  by Leo Tolstoy (1869), The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1869), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  by Mark Twain (1876),  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880), La Bête humaine by Émile Zola (1890), Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899), Gertrud Novel by Hermann Hesse (1910), Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1912), In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913), Kokoro is a novel by Natsume Sōseki (1914), The Trial by Franz Kafka (1915), The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915), A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916), Pierre et Luce by Romain Rolland (1920), Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo (1923), Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925), The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (1925),  The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926), Nadja by Andre Breton (1928), The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929), Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929),  La Chambre Rouge by Rampo Edogawa (1929), As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930), Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932), The Blue Lotus by Hergé (1935), The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (1936), The Graphs of Wrath by  John Steinbeck (1939), The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (1940), Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1940), The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942), The little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943), Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht (1943), Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis (1946), The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato (1948), 1984 by George Orwell (1949), The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (1949), The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951), Death Is My Trade by Robert Merle (1952), The old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952), East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952), Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (1953), Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov (1955), Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo (1955), The Quiet American by Graham Greene (1955), Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957), The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino (1957), The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (1959),  Rabbit Run by John Updike (1960), Aura by Carlos Fuentes (1962), The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes (1962), The Clown by Heinrich Böll (1963), Stoner by John Edward Williams (1965), Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse (1965), To Kill a Mockingbird  by Harper Lee (1966), The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1966), One Hundred Years of Solitude by  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967), Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan (1967), Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969), Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal (1976), Rue des boutiques obscures  by  Patrick Modiano (1978), A Confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980), The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1980), Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez (1981), A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro (1982), Life & Times of Michael K by John Maxwell Coetzee (1983), The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (1984), The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985), The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich (1985), Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989), The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller (1994), The Blindness  by José Saramago (1995), Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich (1997), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997), Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998), My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk (1998), Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (1999), The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa (2001),  The March by E.L. Doctorow (2005), The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster (2005), The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (2011), My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011),  Return to Killybegs by Sorj Chalandon (2011), Home by Toni Morrison (2012), Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement (2012), Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (2013), Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes (2022).

 The list NO. 1 of the novels and plays for Honorable mention can be find in this LINK.

 The list NO. 2 of the novels and plays for Honorable mention can be find in this LINK.

 The list NO. 3 of the novels and plays for Honorable mention can be find in this LINK.

Literary Masterpieces written before , Faust by Goethe (1808):

Antigone  by Sophocles 442 BC, Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, The Aeneids by Virgil (19BC), Shahnameh by Ferdowsi (977-1010), Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1472), Richard III by William Shakespeare (1592),  Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1603),  Othello by William Shakespeare (1604), Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (1605),  Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606), Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)

Short Story Writers:

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)  short story collections (e.g.  The Lady with the Dog, About Love, ...)

Franz Kafka (1883-1924)  short story collections

James Joyce        (1982 - 1941) short story collection Dubliners 1914

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) like short story (The Snows of Kilimanjaro - 1936)

John Cheever (1912 -1982) short story collections ( Golden Age, ...)

Raymond Carver (1938 -1988) short stories like ( Call if you need me, ... )

Alice Munro        (1931-) short stories like (Dear life, )

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) - The Insufferable Gaucho and other stories

Jhumpa Lahiri      (1967-)  short stories like (Hell - Heaven (The New-Yorker May 2004)

South of No North by Charles Bukowski (1973)

 

Armenian Literature

Եղիշէ Չարենց (Բանաստեղծութիւններ) (1897-1937), Ակսել Բակոնց: Մթնաձոր (Պատմւաքների ժողովածու) (1927), Պարոյր Սևակ: Անլռելի զանգակատուն (1959), Գուրգէն Մահարի: Այրւող Այգեստաններ (1966)

Iranian Literature

بوف کور از صادق هدایت   1316 /   چشمهایش بزرگ علوی 1331 /      ماهی سیاه  کوچولو از صمد بهرنگی       1346  /     تنگیر صادق چوبک    1342  /     شازده احتجاب از هوشنگ گلشیری     1348 /      

             همسایه  از احمد   محمود    1353     /       گاو خونی از جعفر مدرس صادقی    1360 /        ثریا در  اغما         از اسماعیل  فصیح       1363  /           سمفونی مردگان از عباس معروفی        1368 / خانه ادریسیها غزاله علیزاده 1369 /

   خاطرات پراکنده از گلی ترقی       1371   /                         چراغ ها را من خاموش می کنم از زویا پیرزاد      1380 /        تهران شهر بی آسمان  امیر حسن چهل تن  1380 /                       گاماسیاب ماهی ندارد از حامد اسماعیلیون 1393 

بازگشت ماهی های پرنده اثر آتوسا افشین نوید، 1400

در لینک روبرو سیاهه ای از رمان ها، داستان های کوتاه و شعر معاصر فارسی را بیابید. سیاهه کارهای ادبی

Poetry

 

Beside the great five: Ferdowsi, Khayam, Molavi, Saadi and Hafez, there are many poets and poems that I enjoy their verses, just name a couple of them:

 Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867) ,  Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926),  Vladimir Maiakovski (1893-1930), Paul Éluard (1895-1952), Yeghishe Charents  (1897-1937), Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966),  Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), Pablo Neruda (1904 -1973),  Paruyr Sevak, (1924-1971), Ahmad Shamloo (1925-2000), Hushang Ebtehaj (Sayeh) (1928 - ),  Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967), Adunis (1930- ) , Tomas Tranströmer (1931 - ), Ahmad Reza Ahmadi (1940-)

 

 

... By the way sometimes I write short stories, poems and literary articles in Armenian, which you can find about them in Armenian page.

 

 

Behemoth, or The Long Parliament by Thomas Hobbes (1681), The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (1781), Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard (1843), The Sickness unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard (1849), Twilight of the idols by Friedrich Nietzsche (1889), The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus (1942), A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (1945),  The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper (1945), Existentialism and Humanism Jean-Paul Sartre (1946), Philosophical Investigations by  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953),   Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty (1989), Philosophy and Social Hope by Richard Rorty (1989), Political Liberalism by John Rawls (1993), Representations of the Intellectual by Edward W. Said (1996), The Roots of Romanticism by Isaiah Berlin (2001), Ethics without ontology by Hilary Putnam (2004), Philosophy Bites by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton (2012), The Most Good You Can Do by Peter Singer (2015), In Praise of Mathematics by Alain Badiou (2016).

 

Cassiscal Music

One of my favorites outside physics is listening to the Classical Music, in order to give a test of my flavor,  I want to just name my favorite pieces:

 Sarabande by George Frideric Handel (written between 1703-1706),  (Four Season by  Antonio Vivaldi (1720), Suite No. 2 in B minor by  Johann Sebastian Bach  (1739), Harp Concerto In A Major by Giovanni Paisiello  (1740 - 1816),  Turkish Rondo, or Rondo alla Turca, the third movement from  Piano Sonata No. 11. by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1783), Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1787),  Symphony No. 40 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1788),  The second movement of beethoven's 3th symphony - Marcia funebre. Adagio assai by Ludwig van Beethoven (1804), Symphony No. 5 by Ludwig van Beethoven (1808), Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor "Für Elise" by Ludwig van Beethoven (1810), The Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major by  Ludwig van Beethoven  (1811),  Unfinished Symphony by Franz Schubert (1822),  Six moments musicaux, D 780 (Op. 94) by Franz Schubert (1828),  Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz (1830), Improptu No. 4 in C,Op. 66 by Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849),  Improptu No. 4 in C,Op. 66 - Fantasie Impromptu by  Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849),  Nocturne op. 20 by   Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), Liszt: Liebestraum No. 1 in A Flat Major, S. 541 No. 1 - Notturno I, Franz Liszt (1850), Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2  by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 by Franz Liszt (1811-1886),  Swan Lake by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1876), Symphony No. 2 by Gustav Mahler, known as the Resurrection Symphony, (1888 and 1894), Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Nocturne In C-Sharp Minor by Frederic Chopin (1830), Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1888),  Violin concerto No. 1, Op. 26 - Max Bruch (1838-1920), The Sleeping Beauty by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), Piano Concerto No. 1 Piano concerto by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky(1875), Solveigs Lied  by Edvard Grieg (1843-1907),  Waves of Danube by Ion Ivanovici (1845-1902),  Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1901),  Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler (1902), Claire de lune by Claude Debussy (1905), Recuerdos de la Alhambra by  Francisco Tárrega (1852- 1909), Also sprach Zarathustra by  Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949),  Symphony No. 2 by  Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943),  Adagio From "Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901 - 1999), Gayane ballet  by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978),  Spartacus ballet by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978),  The Second Waltz by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975),

Folk  Music of Armenia, Iran and the others:

  Krunk by Komitas Vartaped, Sari Galin by Jivan Gasparian and Hossein Alizadeh, "Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song tune is found in several late-16th-century and early-17th-century sources, Eshghim Gal by Hossein Alizadeh and Hamavayan Ensemble (2015)

Popular/Cultural music around the world:

Édith Piaf (1915-1963),  Frank Sinatra (1915-1988),  Joe Dassin (1938-1980),  Matt Monro (1930 – 1985),  John Lenon (1940 - 1980) , Charles Aznavour (1924 - 2018) is dead @ Oct. 1 - 2018 , Leonard Cohen (1934 - 2016 )  is Dead @ Nov. 7 - 2016 ,  Nada Malanima (1953- ), ABBA Swedish pop group (1972 - 1983), Al Bano and Romina Power (1975-1999)

Contemporary composers:

Giovanni Nino Rota (1911 –1979),  Pierre Boulez (1925 - 2016), Ennio Morricone (1928-), Eleni Karaindrou (1941-), Zbigniew Preisner (1955-), Hans Zimmer (1957-)

Film Scores:

Film score of The good the bad and the ugly (1966) by Ennio Morricone,  Film score of 2001: A space Odyssey "Also sprach Zarathustra" composed in 1896 by Richard Strauss remade in 1968 by Alex North, Film score of The Godfather (1972) music by Nino Rota, Film score of Once Upon a Time in America (1984) by Ennio Morricone,  Film Score of Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993) music by Zbigniew Preisner ,  Film score of Schindler's List (1993) music by John Williams,  Film score of The Weeping Meadow music by Eleni Karaindrou (2004)

World Cinema:

In below please find  92 motion pictures, that are my favorites, and also  lists No. 1 , No. 2 , No. 3 and No. 4 of Honorable mentions, which comes after the favorites respectively. The  lists will be expanded and modified obviously by watching and also re-watching the cinema masterpieces.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by David Hand et al. (1937), The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin (1940), Casablanca by Michael Curtiz (1942), Shadow of a Doubt by Alfred Hitchcock (1943),  Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica (1948), Tokyo Story by Yasujirō Ozu (1953), Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa (1954), The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman (1957), 12 Angry Men by Sidney Lumet (1957), Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock (1958), Ben-Hur by William Wyler (1959), The 400 Blows by François Truffaut (1959), Hiroshima, My Love by Alain Resnais (1959), Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock (1960), L'Avventura by Michelangelo Antonioni (1960), Viridiana by Luis Buñuel (1961), Lawrence of Arabia by David Lean (1962) , L'Eclisse by Michelangelo Antonioni (1962), 81/2 by Federico Fellini (1963), Zorba the Greek by Michael Cacoyannis (1964), Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick (1964), Doctor Zhivago by David Lean (1965), Red Beard by Akira Kurosawa (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Sergio Leone (1966), Bonnie and Clyde by Arthur Penn (1967), The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov (1968), 2001: The Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (1968), Family life by Ken Loach (1971), Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972), The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola (1972), Amarcord by Federico Fellini (1973), Papillon by Franklin J. Schaffner (1973), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Milos Forman (1975),  The taxi driver by Martin Scorsese(1976), Annie Hall by Woody Allen (1977), Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky (1979), Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola (1979), Kramer vs. Kramer by Robert Benton (1979), Once Upon a Time in America by Sergio Leone (1984), Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders (1987), Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore (1988), Grave of the Fireflies by Isao Takahata (1988), Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg (1993), The Blue by  Krzysztof Kieslowski (1993), Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino (1994),  Forrest Gump by Robert Zemeckis (1994),  The Shawshank Redemption by  Frank Darabont(1994), Underground by Emir Kusturica (1995),  The Usual Suspects by Bryan Singer (1995),  The bridges of madison county Clint Eastwood (1995), Fargo by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen (1996), Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni (1997), Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami (1997), Eternity and a Day by Theo Angelopoulos (1998), In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai (2000), Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki (2001), Mulholland Drive by David Lynch (2001), La stanza del figlio by Nanni Moretti (2001), Talk to Her by Pedro Almodóvar (2002), The Pianist by Roman Polanski (2002), Ararat by Atom Egoyan (2002), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 by Quentin Tarantino (2003), Spring Summer Fall Winter and ... Spring by Kim Ki-duk (2003), The Weeping Meadow by Theodoros Angelopoulos (2004),  The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006), About Elly by Asghar Farhadi (2009), The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke (2009), Incendies by Denis Villeneuve (2010), A Separation by Asghar Farhadi (2011),  Monsieur Lazhar by Philippe Falardeau (2011), The Dark Night Rises by Christopher Nolan (2012), Amour by Michael Haneke (2012), The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg (2012), Tangerines by Zaza Uru Shadze (2013), Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2014),  Wild Tales by Damián Szifrón (2014), Interstellar by Christopher Nolan (2014), Birdman by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2014), Our Little Sister by Hirokazu Kore-eda (2015), The Salesman by Asghar Farhadi (2016), I, Daniel Blake by Ken Loach (2016), Mother! by Darren Aronofsky (2017), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri by Martin McDonagh (2017), Coco by Lee Unkrich (2017), Yeva by Anahid Abad (2017), Roma by Alfonso Cuarón (2018), Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda (2018), 1917 by Sam Mendes (2019), Parasite by Bong Joon-ho (2019), The Banshees of Inisherin by Martin McDonagh (2022), The Quiet Girl by Colm Bairéad (2022), Close Your Eyes by Víctor Erice (2023).

The list NO. 1 of the  motion pictures for Honorable mention can be find in this LINK.

 The list NO. 2 of the  motion pictures for Honorable mention can be find in this LINK.

 The list NO. 3 of the  motion pictures for Honorable mention can be find in this LINK.

 The list NO. 4 of the  motion pictures for Honorable mention can be find in this LINK.

Favorite Directors:

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), Luis Buñuel (1900-1983),  Yasujirō Ozu (1903 - 1963), Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007),  Federico Fellini (1920-1993), Sergei Parajanov (1924- 1990), Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), Sergio Leone (1929-1989), Jean-Luc Godard (1930-), François Truffaut (1932-1984), Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), Roman Polanski (1933- ), Theo Angelopoulos (1935-2012), Woody Allen (1935-),  Ken Loach (1936 - ), Francis Ford Coppola (1939- ), Krzysztof Kieślowski (1946-1996), Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016), Bernardo Bertolucci (1941- ),  Hayao Miyazaki (1941- ),  Michael Haneke (1942-), Martin Scorsese (1942- ), David Lynch (1946-), Steven Spielberg (1946-), Pedro Almodóvar (1949-), Emir Kusturica (1954-), Giuseppe Tornatore (1956-), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (1959-), David Fincher (1962-), Quentin Tarantino (1963 -),  Alejandro González Iñárritu (1963- ), Christopher Nolan (1970-), Asghar Farhadi (1972-)

Iranian Cinema:

In below please find 22 films / TV series that are my favorites in Iranian Cinema, and also a list of Honorable mentions of Iranian movies which comes after the favorites. The two lists will be expanded and modified obviously by watching and also rewatching the Iranian cinema masterpieces.

The Cow by Dariush Mehrjui (1969), Hezar Dastan by Ali Hatami (1978-1987), Captain Khorshid by Naser Taghvai (1987), Where Is the Friend's Home? by Abbas Kiarostami (1987), Bashu, the Little Stranger by Bahram Beyzai (1989), Hamoon by Dariush Mehrjui (1990),  Delshodegan by Ali Hatami (1990), The Last Act by Varuj Karim Masihi (1991), The Blue-Veiled by Rakhshan Bani-E'temad (1995), Leila by Dariush Mehrjui (1997), Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami (1997), Children of Heaven by Majid Majidi (1999), Smell of Camphor, Scent of Jasmine by Bahman Farmanara (2000), Sagkoshi by Bahram Beizaie (2001), Fireworks Wednesday by Asghar Farhadi (2006), About Elly by Asghar Farhadi (2009), Here Without Me by Bahram Tavakoli (2011), A Seperation by Asghar Farhadi (2011), Parviz by Majid Barzegar (2012),  Fish and Cat by Shahram Mokri (2013), What's the Time in Your World? by Safi Yazdanian (2014), Shahrzad by Hassan Fathi (2015), The Salesman by Asghar Farhadi (2016).

The list of the films for Honorable mentions can be find in this LINK.

 

As a physicists the question of what is life? What are the laws of life and the question that is biology reducible to physical laws interest me a lot. Maybe the What is life? By Erwin Schrödinger in 1944 is a good start. In this direction a very interesting and exciting question of" Are we alone?" arises. This second question can be studied under the discipline of Astrobiology which is a great favor of mine…

 

A trivial extension of the question series on the laws of the universe, one can be asked about the intelligent life. What make the life intelligent? What is the consciousness? And how it can be related to the neurons, brain and biology? Is the intelligence and consciousness an effective theory of a fundamental laws of cells and their interactions or it is something out of the scope of known physics?

A couple of interesting books:

 Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind by Paul M. Churchland (1988),  The Making of Memory by Steven Rose (1992),  In search of nature by E. O. Wilson (1996), The Mystery of Consciousness by John R. Searle (1997), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Philosophy of Mind) by David J. Chalmers (1998), Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind by David Buss, Pearson; 4 edition (2011), Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (2011), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari (2015), The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come by William von Hippel (2018), Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman, (2020).

 

It is while that I become interested with the question of the relation of the language, though and culture. Maybe the story begins by thinking about physics in Farsi or English and discussions we had in classes and special with Reza Mansouri. Then I faced with the works of Richard Rorty where he indicated the importance of language in philosophy, culture and politics, then Willard Van Orman Quine and Steven Pinker come along…

It seems that a huge part of analytical philosophy in 20th century try to answer this type of questions.  The hero of this story is certainly Ludwig Wittgenstein. Anyhow maybe you are interested in questions like this:

Does language influence/ create thought? Can we think without language? Does language affect our perception of nature and society?

A couple of intersting books, articles and links:

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1921), Philosophical Investigations by  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953)

The history of ideas:

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson (2006), Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty by Isaiah Berlin (2002),  William Bristow, Enlightenment (Standford Plato series), The Roots of Romanticism  by Isaiah Berlin (2001), Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2011), The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt (2012).

The history of art:

The Oxford History of Western Art, edited by Martin Kemp, 2000 - Oxford University Press

History and ideas of Science - Physics and Astronomy:

A couple of interesting books in the field:

The Dark Matter Problem A Historical Perspective by Robert H. Sanders (2014),  Heart of Darkness: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Invisible Universe by Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton(2013), The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek (2010), Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology by John North - (2008), The Many Faces Of Science: An Introduction To Scientists, Values, And Society Paperback  by Henry Byerly and Leslie Stevenson (2000), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the World's Science by Colin A. Ronan (1983)

History of Iran:

A couple of interesting books in the field:

Essays on Iranian revolution by Edward Said (1998), A History of Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian (2008), The Persians: Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern Iran Book by Homa Katouzian (2009), Articles by Ervand Abrahamian on the influence of crowds in Iranian Politics

 History of Armenia:

A couple of interesting books in the field:

The History of Armenia by Simon Payaslian Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition ( 2007) , The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars by Razmik Panossian Columbia University Press; 1st edition (2006), Armenia: Cradle of Civilization by David Marshall Lang  (1971)

 The history of world:

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin 1989, Remnants of Auschwitz by Giorgio Agamben (1998), Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century by Patrik Ourední (2001), The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century by Robert B. Marks (2015)

History and Geography:

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics Book by Tim Marshall (2015)

 

The life, work and ideas  of educator  Touran Mirhadi ( 1927 - 2016)

 

Paintings are the windows to human souls and nature, I like many masterpieces, their story and the interpretation of them.

A list of great paintings are

Three Beauties of the Present Day Kitagawa Utamaro (1793),  Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (1818), The Umbrellas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1880-1886,  Wheat Field with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh (1889),  Sewing the Sail by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (1896), The Artist and His Mother by Arshile Gorky (1936), Rooms by the Sea, 1951 by Edward Hopper.

And just six of them in below ...

Van Gogh-Starry Night-1889       

Van Gogh-Starry Night-1889                 Edward Munch- The Scream - 1893              Raphael-  School of athen  - 1509

                            

Pierre Auguste Renoir - Le Moulin de la Galette - 1876       Claude Monet:  Woman with a Parasol 1875     Kandinsky- Composition VII - 1913

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer (1665)

Works of  Nasrollah Kasraian, Maryam Zandi  ...

Since 26 August 2008, once for a while I publish a post in my multi-language and multi-author weblog  Papier de Liberte. It is not a professional record of my thought it is just a hobby and could be assumed as a scratch of my thoughts randomly.

 

In below let me name couple of very interesting  world chess championships and then some memorable plays:

3)The 1985 World Chess Championship  played between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov in Moscow from September 3 to November 9, 1985. Kasparov won, to become the thirteenth and youngest world champion at the age of 22.

2)The World Chess Championship 1972 was a match between challenger Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union for the World Chess Championship. The match took place in the Laugardalshöll arena in Reykjavík, Iceland and has been dubbed the Match of the Century. Fischer became the first American born in the United States to win the World Championship and the second American overall to win the title

1)At the World Chess Championship 1963 Tigran Petrosian narrowly qualified to challenge Mikhail Botvinnik for the World Chess Championship, and then won the match to become the ninth World Chess Champion.

 

In below please find a list of NON-Fiction works with diversity that I found them interesting.

The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant (11 Volume) (1935–1975), L'art de mourir - 2e édition - Morand, Paul (1888-1976), Why War? Book by Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud (1933), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt (1963), The Words by Jean-Paul Sartre (1963), Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag (1966), The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel (1979), When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom (1992), Balkan express by Slavenka Drakulić (1993), Remnants of Auschwitz by Giorgio Agamben (1998), Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover (1999),  The Roots of Romanticism by Isaiah Berlin (1999), Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Simon Critchley (2001) , Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century by Patrik Ouředník (2001), On Arendt by Patricia Altenbernd Johnson (2001),  Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty by Isaiah Berlin (2002), Routledge History of Philosophy (10 Volumes) Edited by G.H.R. Parkinson, Stuart Shanker (2003), Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag (2003), The Century by Alain Badiou (2005), Michelangelo: Sculptor and Painter by Barbara Somervill (2005), Confucius: Chinese Philosopher and Teacher by Michael Burgan (2008), Except When I Write: Reflections of a Recovering Critic by Arthur Krystal (2011), Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2011), Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2012), Art as therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong (2013), Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest For Economic Meaning From Gilgamesh To Wall Street by Tomas Sedlacek (2013), Levels of Life by Julian Barnes (2013), Home Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (2015), Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live by Daniel Klein (2017), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari (2018), The Narrow Corridor: How Nations Struggle for Liberty by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson (2020).

پنج اقلیم حضور از داریوش شایگان   ,  شصت سال عاشقی زندگی و زمانه پوری سلطان ,  و مرتضی کیوان نوشته فرشاد قوشچیپنج اقلیم حضور از داریوش شایگان   ,  شصت سال عاشقی زندگی و زمانه پوری سلطان ,  و مرتضی کیوان نوشته فرشاد قوشچی

احیای علوم سیاسی حسین بشیریه، سال چاپ نود و شش, کتاب سرگذشت فکری شاهرخ مسکوب یوسف اسحاق پور  سال نودو نه

 

1-A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988)

 2- The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe by Steven Weinberg (1993)

3- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2003)

4- Heart of Darkness: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Invisible Universe by Jeremiah P. Ostriker & Simon Mitton - Princeton Univversity Press (2013)

5-The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli (2017)

6- Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking (2018)

*  "To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding."

First sentence translated into Armenian from Book of Proverbs, 1:2 ( 411) - 400s.

*Sapere aude

Sapere aude  is the Latin phrase meaning "Dare to know"; and also is loosely translated as "Have courage to use your own reason", "Dare to know things through reason". Originally used in the First Book of Letters (20 BC), by the Roman poet Horace, the phrase Sapere aude became associated with the Age of Enlightenment, during the 17th and 18th centuries, after Immanuel Kant used it in the essay "Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (1784). As a philosopher, Kant claimed the phrase Sapere aude as the motto for the entire period of the Enlightenment, and used it to develop his theories of the application of reason in the public sphere of human affairs. (c) Wiki

 خرد رهنمای و خرد دلگشا  شاهنامه فردوسی* 

* ubi dubium, ibi libertas. Anonymous Latin proverb.

* "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

John Donne : Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, "Meditation XVII",  (1624)

* "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Being taken from a letter written in 1676 by Sir Isaac Newton to his fellow-scientist Robert Hooke, acknowledging the debt he owed to other scientists

* "Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me".

Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

* "A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around him."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

* "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."  Oscar Wilde (1884–1898)

* “Just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the world.”  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

* " Ses en pleine lumière /  Font s'evaporer les soleils,  /  Me font rire, pleurer et rire, / Parler sans avoir rien a dire,"

Paul Éluard (1895 - 1952)

* "Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion."

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983)

* “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)

* "Harry, there is never a perfect answer in this messy, emotional world. Perfection is beyond the reach of humankind, beyond the reach of magic. In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison: the knowledge that pain will come again. Be honest to those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe."

Albus Dumbledore to Harry in "Harry Potter and Cursed Child" by J.K. Rolling (2016)

* “We live for books.”  ;   “Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”  from The Name of the Rose ;  “To survive, you must tell stories.”  from  The Island of the Day Before  ;   “When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.” ;  “I love the smell of book ink in the morning.” ;  Making lists of things that seem infinite is "a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.   all from Umberto Eco

*You should enter science because you are fascinated by it. That's what I did James Peebles 2019

In this specific link, please find some paragraphs from the Books I read.