Some good books for learning science and the history of science:
1. Lectures on Physics (I-III), Richard Feynmann
A challenging first-year physics course that most of the original Caltech undergraduate class never made it through. Feynmann's deep undestanding and intuition about physics really comes out.
2. The Evolution of Scientific Thought, A. d'Abro
3. The Rise of the New Physics (I & II), A. d'Abro
d'Abro came out of nowhere and wrote the definative books on the history of physics.
4. Foundations of Physics, Lindsay & Margenau
Smaller and more advanced than Feynmann, this is a good thing to study next if you want to get deeper into quantum mechanics, general relativity, statistical mechanics, etc.
5. Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior (I - IV), Abraham & Shaw
Sometimes hard to find, but wow. This is a real brain tickler, even though it has no equations. If you want to understand modern dynamics (qualitative mechanics, bifurcations, chaos, etc), this is the best introduction. Abraham is one of our country's leading mathematicians, and quite a wild character in real life.
6. The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, Max Jammer
Also hard to find now, but this is a remarkable deep journey into quantum mechanics: history, Bohr-Einstein debates, EPR, Hidden-variable theories, quantum logic, interpretation, theory of measurement. A no-bull**** discussion of stuff that is treated very incorrectly in popular media (like EPR often is).
7. What is Mathematics, Courant and Robbins
A fun well-written book that introduces the reader to pure mathematics. Number theory, algebra, calculus, projective geometry, topology, etc. But written very intuitively for a general audience.
