For me it was Jack London's fiction <i>The Sea-Wolf.</i> I was/am interested in philosophical ideas/frameworks but the simple direct materialistic philosophy espoused by Wolf Larsen in the above book made me question everything i had read.<p>Here are the relevant excerpts : <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1jqpar/what_book_singlehandedly_made_you_change_your_life/cbhweki/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1jqpar/what_book_sin...</a><p>We are mere "Animals" with a far more complex social structure than any other species which is why we invent all sorts of "subjective meanings" to "objectively meaningless" life. How to reconcile both is the eternal "Human Condition" problem.<p>See also : <i>Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality</i> by James Tartaglia. Free pdf at - <a href="https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781474247696&st=james+tartaglia" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781...</a>
The most radical book I’ve read is the Bible. But dramatically different…Discover of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane perhaps. I don’t agree with everything she wrote but she had some interesting ideas.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid<p>A unique synthesis of aesthetics and mathematics that completely formed my worldview.<p>Perhaps slightly dated, because it was written very early in the computer revolution. Had it been written today, the Artificial Intelligence chapters would be very different.
Second Nietzsche - Beyond Good & Evil + Thus Spake Zarathustra.<p>TPZ is really a poetic/mock religious text version of BG&E.<p>The first few chapters of BG&E ask the question: why we humans seek knowledge at all? What drives the will to knowledge. . .feelings? A question most scientists never even think to ask. . but that seems the most radical question of all (as in getting to the 'root' of it all).
The Bible, specifically the New Testament, and more specifically，The Gospels. The reason that it's radical is that Christ overturns traditional notions of morality. Greco-Roman thought saw the rich and powerful as close to the divine but Christ's message is that the meek and poor are prefered by God.<p>Coming in at #2, I would argue for Marx, maybe Capital. It's radical because it shows that Capitalism is not a "natural" state of affairs (as much as it would like us to believe that it is).
By that definition of "radical": painful and difficult to read, but
yielding enormous positive transformation, then for me Aldous Huxley's
"Heaven and Hell" (which contains "Doors of Perceptions"), Erich
Fromm's "To Have or to Be", Lewis Mumford's "Technics and
Civilization" and his "The Myth of the Machine". YMMV, but for me all
of these were "radical" in challenging my purely rational,
instrumental, and I think very limited ideas of knowledge, technology
and "progress" that I held as a younger scientist/engineer.
I've got a whole list of books like this sitting somewhere on my hard drive called "Well-Argued Ideologies Very Different From My Own". Covers the whole gamut, from anti-natalism to Z-theory.<p><i>The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life</i> would be my go-to. It's all about how people's motives are a lot more self-serving than you might think, including your own.<p>If you liked that, and then really want to go off the deep end, try <i>The Enigma of Reason</i>.
<i>The Master and His Emissary</i> by Ian McGilchrist<p><i>Why Materialism is Baloney</i> by Bernardo Kastrup<p>The first one really opened my mind to alternate modes of thought. The first half of the book is especially interesting, the second half is skippable. I don't think I could have appreciated the second book if I hadn't read the first.<p><i>The Dictator's Handbook</i> by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith is another good one. Afaik, the first successful attempt to create a true theory of politics.
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn<p>Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner<p>On the Genealogy of Morality by Nietzsche<p>Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters