What accelerated your understanding of how the world works?
zeynel1: +Newton's Principia as a masterpiece of marketing and for creating the modern scholasticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia...+Descartes' Geometry where he declares that you can choose any line as a unit to measure other lines (your knowledge depends on what you already know, your unit) (p.1)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26400/26400-pdf.pdf+Galileo's Dialogues for the realization that real understanding of nature does not come from academic gibberish and research is actually fun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chi...+Dana Densmore's Newton book to understand Principia
http://www.greenlion.com/cgi-bin/SoftCart.100.exe/principi.h...+Slow burn by Stu Mittleman to understand how human body deals with fat and sugar
http://www.amazon.com/Slow-Burn-Faster-Exercising-Slower/dp/...+The Answer John Assaraf about habits 
http://www.amazon.com/Answer-Business-Achieve-Financial-Extr...+Paul Graham's essays on education and dropping out of school for early startup
http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html+Ernst Mach's History of mechanics for its incredible lucidity and classic simplicity
http://books.google.com/books?id=8bI3-JSarecC&dq=ernst+m...+Euclid for its complete lack of physics in it and its beautiful diagrams
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html 
+Aristotle for appreciation of curiosity
http://books.google.com/books?id=WWyF4vS8P7UC&pg=PA154&#...+Bertrand Russel for his humor
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell 
and for his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
Really beautiful book so simple and fun to read...
http://books.google.com/books?id=9GK_Fhz5RDUC&dq=introdu...+Tolstoy's Confessions
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tolstoy/confession... 
For his intellectual quest going in circlesI believe that if you continue long enough in your quest, your research and understandings will describe such a circle. That's not a bad thing, I guess.How does the world work? The world works the way you look at it. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210104  We see what we believe.Ooops, I think I am steering away from your question. But I learned something about how the world works from each one of these books.I totally appreciate your approach to the question from a wholistic view (including the social and human elements) by disregarding academic boundaries.