Author: Shimon Malin
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814462888
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
It is naturally important for any of us to have a correct view of the universe we are in. Having realized that the Newtonian world-view is untenable, this book joins others that are searching for an alternative world-view. It is unique in using quantum physics to promote this search.One aim of the book is to present a lucid exposition of quantum mechanics in terms accessible to the general reader. Another aim is to show that realism (the belief that the outside world exists “from its own side” regardless of acts of consciousness) and locality (the belief that nothing moves faster than light) are invalid, and should be replaced by a new paradigm according to which the universe is alive. A third aim is to show that the thinking of quantum physicists evokes the philosophies of Plato and Plotinus.The revised edition will include a conversation between two fictional characters to elucidate the discussion of the meaning of wave functions.
Author: Adrian Bejan
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307744345
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the constructal law, accounts for the evolution of these and many other designs in our world. Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow. River basins, cardiovascular systems, and bolts of lightning are very efficient flow systems to move a current—of water, blood, or electricity. Likewise, the more complex architecture of animals evolve to cover greater distance per unit of useful energy, or increase their flow across the land. Such designs also appear in human organizations, like the hierarchical “flowcharts” or reporting structures in corporations and political bodies. All are governed by the same principle, known as the constructal law, and configure and reconfigure themselves over time to flow more efficiently. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is a paradigm-shifting book that will fundamentally transform our understanding of the world around us.
Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107684536
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 507
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Book Description
From quantum to biological and digital, here eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians chart various aspects of information.
Author: Jeffrey J. Kripal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022612682X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 493
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Book Description
This latest work by the renowned historian of religions Jeffrey Kripal crystallizes his twenty-five years of work on two aspects of the contemporary study of religion: the erotic expression of mystical experience and the rise of the paranormal in American culture. Combining elements of memoir, manifesto, and anthology (a Kripal Reader, as it were), Secret Body reveals Kripal's oeuvre not as a series of disconnected books but as a dynamic corpus with the potential to renew and reshape the study of religion. Kripal explains how this oeuvre came about with his trademark humor and honesty, answers his censors and critics, and lays the foundation for a future theory of religion grounded in the cosmic nature of consciousness as such. No one interested in the history of religion and the erotic dimension of mysticism can afford to overlook Kripal's latest, his definitive intellectual self-portrait.
Author: David A. Grandy
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253004756
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
Most people have heard about quantum physics and its remarkable, well-nigh bizarre claims. And most people would assume that quantum reality describes a world quite different from ours. In this book, David A. Grandy shows that one can find quantum puzzles, or variations thereof, in the backyard of everyday experience. What disappears in transferring quantum theory to the everyday is the theory's mathematical formalism, but that need not imply a loss of analytic rigor. If quantum reality is truly as elemental and ubiquitous as many thinkers suggest, then alternative or complementary perspectives ought to be possible, and with the proliferation of such perspectives, a more fully rounded understanding of quantum reality -- and everyday reality -- might emerge. Everyday Quantum Reality is a step in that direction.
Author: Donna Bowman
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823238954
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
This book brings together process and postmodern theologians to reflect on the crucial topic of energy, asking: What are some of the connections between energy and theology? How do ideas about humanity and divinity interrelate with how we live our lives? Its contributors address energy in at least three distinct ways. First, in terms of physics, the discovery of dark energy in 1998 uncovered a mysterious force that seems to be driving the inflation of the universe. Here cosmology converges with theological reflection about the nature and origin of the universe. Second, the social and ecological contexts of energy use and the current energy crisis have theological implications insofar as they are caught up with ultimate human meanings and values. Finally, in more traditional theological terms of divine spiritual energy, we can ask how human conceptions of energy relate to divine energy in terms of creative power.
Author: Jeffrey J. Kripal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226453707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 590
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Book Description
Chronicles Esalen's birth in the American counterculture in a insightful history that describes in detail how two maverick thinkers sought to fuse the spiritual revelations of the East with the scientific revolutions of the West.
Author: Samuel Chase Coale
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813932874
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
Episodic and disconnected, much of postmodern fiction mirrors the world as quantum theorists describe it, according to Samuel Chase Coale. In Quirks of the Quantum, Coale shows how the doubts, misgivings, and ambiguities reflected in the postmodern American novel have been influenced by the metaphors and models of quantum theory. Coale explains the basic facets of quantum theory in lay terms and then applies them to a selection of texts, including Don DeLillo's Underworld, Joan Didion's Democracy, and Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. Using a new approach to literature and culture, this book aims to bridge the gap between science and the humanities by suggesting the many areas where they connect.
Author: Nancy Frankenberry
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691134871
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 542
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Book Description
The Faith of Scientists is an anthology of writings by twenty-one legendary scientists, from the dawn of the Scientific Revolution to the frontiers of science today, about their faith, their views about God, and the place religion holds--or doesn't--in their lives in light of their commitment to science. This is the first book to bring together so many world-renowned figures of Western science and present them in their own words, offering an intimate window into their private and public reflections on science and faith. Leading religion scholar Nancy Frankenberry draws from diaries, personal letters, speeches, essays, and interviews, and reveals that the faith of scientists can take many different forms, whether religious or secular, supernatural or naturalistic, conventional or unorthodox. These eloquent writings reflect a spectrum of views from diverse areas of scientific inquiry. Represented here are some of the most influential and colossal personalities in the history of science, from the founders of science such as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein, to modern-day scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Jane Goodall, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Edward O. Wilson, and Ursula Goodenough. Frankenberry provides a general introduction as well as concise introductions to each chapter that place these writings in context and suggest further reading from the latest scholarship. As surprising as it is illuminating and inspiring, The Faith of Scientists is indispensable for students, scholars, and anyone seeking to immerse themselves in important questions about God, the universe, and science.
Author: David A. Grandy
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253003628
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Light -- our experience of light, our measurement of light, and the notion that light speed is constant -- can be understood to mark our interface with the cosmos. David A. Grandy's book moves from the scientific to the existential, from Einstein to Merleau-Ponty, from light as a phenomenon to light as that which is constitutive of reality. To measure the speed of light is to measure something about the way we are measured or blended into the cosmos, and that universal blending predetermines our measurement of light speed in favor of a universal or constant value. It's quite a trip, one aimed at scientists who have pondered light speed constancy, philosophers inclined to question the idea that mind and world are distinct, and scientifically or philosophically inclined persons who enjoy stretching themselves in new ways.
