The book that changed my mind – 12 experts share a perspective-shifting read
Our beliefs aren’t fixed. They’re shaped, stretched and sometimes overturned by the ideas we encounter as we move through life. For many of us, books are the moments where that shift happens – a sentence that lingers, an argument that unsettles, a story that re-frames how we see the world. We asked 12 academic experts to share the book that challenged their assumptions and changed their thinking in a lasting way.
1. A Very Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (2002)
For much of my life as a scientist, I struggled to understand how anyone could have religious faith and follow the scientific method. Then I came across A Very Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Science and within it philosopher David Hume’s problem with inductive reasoning.
Induction lets us predict from patterns – if 11 eggs in a dozen are rotten, we expect the 12th to be rotten too. But as Hume notes, this reasoning is logically flawed: we justify induction by saying it has worked before, which is circular because it uses induction to defend itself.
This line of thought reshaped my views. There is no ultimate logical proof that induction works; I simply believe it does. In other words, I have faith in the scientific method.
Realising this stopped me fretting about how others reconcile science and religion. Faith and evidence coexist in my own thinking. I’m no more inclined to believe in a god, but I no longer have a problem understanding how faith and science can inhabit the same mind.
Mark Lorch is a biochemist, writer, and Professor of science communication
2. Nature is a Human Right, edited by Ellen Miles (2022)
Like so many others, I found myself gravitating back towards the natural world during the COVID pandemic, both in my academic work and my personal life. And I’d come to understand how disconnection and detachment from nature was harming the health and happiness of millions of people worldwide. But I hadn’t given much serious thought to equitable access to nature until I’d read Nature Is a Human Right.
The collection of essays and writings in this edited volume irrevocably convinced me that contact with, and access to, the natural world should not just be a privilege for some, but enshrined as a basic right for everyone.
The collection of ideas and arguments in this book – sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes upsetting – has persuaded me that we have to take action, not just to protect the natural world, but to ensure that contact with nature is a birthright for everyone.
Viren Swami is a professor of psychology
3. The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rhode (2012)
When I completed my PhD in 2012, I felt a strong pressure to adhere to a narrow view of computer science, where creativity and storytelling were often seen as superfluous. Then I attended a sketchnotes workshop, a practice I had never encountered before. Sketchnotes is a visual note-taking method that combines words and sketches to support creativity and memory recall.
The facilitator recommended Rohde’s book, and during my postdoctoral research, it quietly transformed my perspective. Joining the sketchnotes community, I met people from diverse backgrounds – teachers, chief technical officers and physicists – creating compelling visual stories. The book and community showed me that sketching should not be overlooked in computer science. Something I had always kept as a personal practice could become central to my research and teaching.
I challenged the stereotype of sketching as a “soft skill” and embraced it as a disciplined, creative and impactful way to understand people and their interactions with technology. Now, sketching is not just a tool, but a mindset that shapes everything I do.
Makayla Lewis is an senior lecturer of computer science (user experience)
4. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)
In Tchaikovsky’s novel, Earth has become uninhabitable and humanity spreads out into the stars in search of a new home. After much trial and error, we find a viable world – but it’s already home to a species of intelligent spiders.
I’m arachnophobic, so this novel might seem like an odd choice. However, Children of Time is told partly from the spiders’ perspective, and though they don’t think exactly like us, we can empathise with them as we follow the sometimes-painful growth of their civilisation, and their inevitable encounter with scary alien invaders – us.
I’m not claiming this novel to be a miracle cure, but it prompted me to reflect on my anxiety. I’m not going to get a pet tarantula anytime soon, but I’m more mindful of spiders than I was before. They really are quite fascinating little creatures when you get to know them.
Jack Fennell is a lecturer in English
5. On the Plurality of Worlds by David Lewis (1986)
Is the past real? How about the future? Common sense says no: the present encapsulates all existence. I used to agree. Then, in my early 20s, I read On the Plurality of Worlds. David Lewis’s metaphysical masterpiece changed my mind about many things, but most profoundly about time.
Lewis convinced me that time is analogous to space. Spatially distant objects (a café in Paris, a crater on Mars) are real, even if they aren’t “here”. Lewis argues time is identical. The past and future are merely temporal locations.
This leads to a stunning conclusion: Julius Caesar and the dinosaurs have just as much existence as you and I, even if they aren’t “now”. They haven’t vanished into nothingness. They are simply located elsewhere in the temporal dimension. The same applies to future things and events. Once I accepted this, I stopped seeing reality as a fleeting moment and began to see it as a vast, existing landscape of time. It was a complete conceptual shift that has remained with me ever since.
Benjamin L. Curtis is a senior lecturer in philosophy
6. Humankind: A Hopeful History and Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman (2019)
From criminal punishment to tax incentives, modern society assumes humans need guidance to avoid their worst instincts. Humankind by Rutger Bregman offers a very different perspective on our species and how peace can be achieved.
Have you ever felt embarrassed by blushing? You shouldn’t – blushing is a “superpower”. Our capacity to show shame helps form complex social bonds. History shows the most stable societies temper leaders’ ambitions and promote humility. Humans generally prioritise fairness over harm, and when violence occurs, it’s often due to hierarchy, not innate instinct. Bregman cites studies showing that leadership can reduce empathy, increase selfishness and encourage cheating.
The book challenged my view of government. I’d believed strong laws create order, but often it’s attempts to control others that empower strong leaders and cause instability. True social order comes from daily human relationships. A better world requires rethinking how we distribute power.
Michael Strange is an associate professor of international relations
7. Shikasta by Doris Lessing (1979)
When I was 18, Doris Lessing’s Shikasta first crossed my path. Even if I now, 46 years later, no longer remember the details of the plot, I still recall the unsettling feeling the novel gave me. It was as if I had glimpsed a dark future.
Materialism, egoism, war and unemployment thrived while deeper values as striving for collaboration or peace (ha!) vanished in to the air. When I read the book, I started to look upon the state of the world in new light. I wondered if the injustices on our planet could be avoided. And what we could expect in a nearby future.
I was both a bit scared and at the same time had the feeling that I had understood or seen something others didn’t talk about. For a long time, I waited to see Lessing’s vision unfold. Perhaps, in some ways, it now has.
Eva Wennås Brante is an associate professor in educational science
8. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2011)
Sapiens brilliantly weaves its author’s expertise in anthropology, behavioural science, geopolitics and socioeconomics into an enthralling, astute and thoroughly entertaining book that challenged, demolished and rebuilt my worldview. The unexpected ways creating, sharing and learning from stories have influenced who we trust, what we believe and how we govern ourselves, as individuals and as organised groups, are masterfully explained in the book.
In particular, the exploration of the impact of storytelling on our communities and the way we define, experience and shape culture fascinated me.
Harari draws from a wealth of real world examples that offer a fresh perspective on key historical events and core aspects of our societies that we routinely take for granted. I gained a new understanding of life and how to live it.
Alina Patelli is a senior lecturer in applied artificial intelligence
9. 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth (1990)
In the 90s, my father gave me 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth by the Earth Works Group. It started with short summaries on global environmental concerns at the time (the hole in the ozone layer, pollution, biodiversity loss). But then, importantly, it proceeded to give readers ideas about practical changes in their lives they could do to address those global concerns.
As a child, this book taught me that these were global issues but that my actions mattered, that we all had the power to help our natural world. It changed my mind about who can solve global problems and helped set me on a path to get involved in environmental conservation, which eventually became a career in marine climate change research. Today, this experience tells me that it is never too early to start thinking about what we as individuals can do for nature.
Ana M. Queirós is a professor in climate change and marine biology
10. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1946)
During my postdoctoral research, I was drawn towards Holocaust testimonies including Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi (1947) and Night by Elie Wiesel (1956). These are powerful, remarkable memoirs, but the book that redirected my thoughts was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Holocaust testimonies explore the experience of struggle, the shock of witnessing the unthinkable, the terrifying logistics of a genocide. But Man’s Search for Meaning also offers the reader an insight into Frankl’s enlightened psychological perspective as this book was written while he was still inside the camp, rather than as a reflection afterwards.
Frankl was an established psychiatrist when sent to Auschwitz, but his reflections on the meaning of abject psychological and physical suffering pushed him into philosophical territory. In the darkest place on Earth, he found an existential truth: A person can “choose one’s attitude in any set of given circumstances, to choose one’s own way”. He refers to this choice as “the last inner freedom … a spiritual freedom” in the face of despair and death.
Laura Stephenson is a senior lecturer in film
11. The Concept of the Mind by Gilbert Ryle (1949)
Pre-eminent among the books that have forever changed my thinking is Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind. In medical school I learnt all about the human sciences but was baffled by psychology, a parallel universe where the laws of physics didn’t seem to apply. Ryle explained that there’s no “ghost in the machine” but that we can describe our one world using a physical or a psychological vocabulary.
When I worked as a psychiatrist, The Concept of Mind showed me that different models of mental illness based on neurophysiology or psychoanalysis or behaviourism or social rehabilitation could all, in principle, be correct.
So I was free to help change patients minds by altering their neurochemistry or by psychological means, confident that their brains would also heal.
Ryle implies that inferences about mental facts should be as carefully drawn as those about physical phenomena. But it has seemed to me, as a mental capacity law researcher, that the process of inferring capacity is tortuous and irretrievably subjective. The Concept of Mind has given me the confidence to challenge the law and to provide radical alternatives. I am greatly in Gilbert Ryle’s debt.
Jonathan Fisk is a PhD candidate in law
12. The Mushroom at the End of The World by Anna Tsing (2015)
We are not used to reading stories without human heroes – and yet, as researchers, these are exactly the narratives we often reproduce. During my PhD, I spent four months in Botswana and South Africa chasing tails (and tales) of African wild dogs. For me, this is where Anna Tsing’s work came alive.
Though much of the research in my field tells us that non-human beings are active participants in shaping encounters and environments, this co-production is rarely extended to our work. The Mushroom at the End of the World asks us to “bring back curiosity”, noticing beyond seeing, opening up a multi-sensory world of presence and possibility.
In the field, this meant adapting my methods in situ, incorporating sound and smell to attend to wild dogs’ ways of moving through and understanding space. This counter-mapping transgresses imagined human boundaries and paths, opening up ways to research and respond to more-than human worlds.
Anna Bedenk-Smith is a lecturer in human geography
Has a book ever changed your mind? Let us know in the comments below
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