Waste Books
An eighteenth-century physicist's private notebooks, which turn out to read like the sharpest feed you have ever scrolled.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was an eighteenth-century physicist who kept notebooks he never meant anyone to read, filling them with jokes, doubts and one-line demolitions of received wisdom. Published after his death, they made him a favourite of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein. The form is startlingly modern: fragments, contradictions, and a mind arguing with itself in public two centuries before anyone had a feed to do it in.
Recommended by 1 Person
Derek Sivers
Tweets from 1765-1799 by a 4’9” hunchback physicist, friends with Goethe and Kant, admired by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc. Such wonderful random thoughts, beautiful perspectives on thinking for yourself, observing nature, language, freedom, philosophy, religion, and more.
As an Amazon Associate, bookstoread.org earns from qualifying purchases. Links to Amazon on this page may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Spotted an error on this page? Tell us and we will fix it.