It’s not exactly a textbook series, but I’ve found the videos at khan academy http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse to be really helpful with getting the basics of a lot of things. The most advanced math it covers is calculus, which will get you a long way, and the language of the videos is always simple and straightforward.
… Guess I need to recommend it against other video series, to keep to the rules here.
And though it just covers abiogenesis and evolution, cdk007 http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007?blend=1&ob=5#p/a does have quite a bit of overlap with khan’s biology section. But it’s a lot more narrow than what khan covers, and pretty much is just there to counter creationists. While that’s a pretty good goal, and the videos are good, it’s not as good for learning in my opinion.
It’s not exactly a textbook series, but I’ve found the videos at khan academy http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse to be really helpful with getting the basics of a lot of things. The most advanced math it covers is calculus, which will get you a long way, and the language of the videos is always simple and straightforward.
… Guess I need to recommend it against other video series, to keep to the rules here.
I do recommend watching the stanford lecture videos http://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity?blend=1&ob=5 , but I recommend Khan over them for simplicity’s sake on getting the basics. (Then watch stanford for a more complex understanding)
And though it just covers abiogenesis and evolution, cdk007 http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007?blend=1&ob=5#p/a does have quite a bit of overlap with khan’s biology section. But it’s a lot more narrow than what khan covers, and pretty much is just there to counter creationists. While that’s a pretty good goal, and the videos are good, it’s not as good for learning in my opinion.