Reciprocality Book List
This page collects the principal reading referenced throughout the Reciprocality papers, together with several closely related works. Each title appears once. Short comments are adapted from the original notes and kept only where they clarify why the book matters to the project.
Programmers Stone
Scott Adams — The Dilbert Future
Boxtree
A satirical but accurate observation of workplace behaviour. Its value here is diagnostic: ritualised corporate behaviour and bureaucratic language are not exaggerations but recurring patterns.
Frederick P. Brooks — The Mythical Man-Month
Addison-Wesley
Still one of the clearest descriptions of why software projects fail when treated as mechanical processes instead of cognitive work.
Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister — Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Dorset House
Emphasises environment and human factors. The argument that productivity depends on attention and concentration strongly influenced the teaching methods that later became the Programmers’ Stone.
Peter DeGrace & Leslie Hulet Stahl — The Olduvai Imperative
An attempt to understand what programmers are actually doing when they create software rather than what management documentation claims they are doing.
Richard P. Feynman — Feynman Lectures on Computation
Addison-Wesley
Important for the idea that information has physical meaning and energetic cost.
Erich Gamma et al. — Design Patterns
Addison-Wesley
Shows that software construction depends on compositional thinking rather than rule-following procedures.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt — The Goal
Problem-solving described as a thinking process rather than an administrative one.
Luke Hohmann — Journey of the Software Professional
Closest mainstream description of the mindset the Programmers’ Stone attempted to teach.
Steven Levy — Hackers
Historical account of creative technical culture and how innovation actually emerges.
Peter Naur — Computing: A Human Activity
A foundational statement that programming is fundamentally cognitive work.
Howard S. Schwartz — Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay
Describes organisational dysfunction from a psychological perspective.
Peter Senge — The Fifth Discipline
Introduces systems thinking in business environments.
George Spencer-Brown — Laws of Form
Provides the mathematical inspiration for the logical analysis later developed in the Ghost Not.
Gerald M. Weinberg — The Psychology of Computer Programming
An early and still relevant examination of programming as human cognition.
Michael White — Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer
Illustrates the historical overlap between scientific reasoning and broader conceptual frameworks.
Edward Yourdon — Decline and Fall of the American Programmer
Documents management ritualism and its effects on technical work.
M0
Alice A. Bailey — Telepathy
Included for its discussion of shared perception and convergence toward reality, interpreted here in cognitive rather than mystical terms.
Richard P. Feynman — What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Illustrates independent reasoning within institutional settings.
Edgar Z. Friedenberg — Laing
Analysis of social pressures shaping behaviour and perception.
R. D. Laing — The Politics of Experience
Describes social structures influencing perception and psychological development.
G. I. Gurdjieff — Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
Presented here as a symbolic treatment of awareness and attention.
P. D. Ouspensky — In Search of the Miraculous
Explores disciplined observation of consciousness.
Idries Shah — The Sufis
Provides historical parallels to the cognitive themes discussed in Reciprocality.
Ghost Not
R. D. Laing — Knots
A linguistic description of recursive logical contradictions in everyday reasoning.
Reciprocal Cosmology
L. S. Schulman — Time’s Arrows and Quantum Measurement
Discusses time symmetry and measurement in physics.
J. S. Bell — Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics
Careful philosophical analysis of quantum theory.
Paul Davies (ed.) — The New Physics
General overview of modern physical problems.
David Deutsch — The Fabric of Reality
Integrates computation, physics, and epistemology.
Richard P. Feynman — The Character of Physical Law
Explores the meaning and limits of physical theories.
Richard P. Feynman — The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Foundational treatments of physical principles.
Frederick W. Kantor — Information Mechanics
Relates physical processes to information.
Harvey S. Leff & Andrew F. Rex — Maxwell’s Demon
Links thermodynamics, information, and computation.
Benoit Mandelbrot — The Fractal Geometry of Nature
Demonstrates self-similar structure in natural systems.
Isaac Newton — Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
The classical framework of mechanics.
Alastair Rae — Quantum Mechanics
Accessible introduction to quantum theory.
Kip Thorne — Black Holes and Time Warps
Modern treatment of relativity and cosmology.
Consciousness
Daniel C. Dennett — Consciousness Explained
A comprehensive overview of contemporary approaches to consciousness research.
Hypertime
John G. Bennett — Gurdjieff: Making a New World
Historical interpretation of structured awareness traditions.
Robert A. McDermott (ed.) — The Essential Steiner
Selected writings on perception and cognition.
P. D. Ouspensky — The Strange Life of Ivan Ossokin
Explores cyclical models of time.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — The Phenomenon of Man
A philosophical view of evolving complexity and consciousness.
Original material late 1990s. This edition prepared as an archival and discussion resource.