Why Does the World Exist

Why Does the World Exist PDF Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404095
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book

Book Description
In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.

Why Does the World Exist

Why Does the World Exist PDF Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404095
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book

Book Description
In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.

Why the World Does Not Exist

Why the World Does Not Exist PDF Author: Markus Gabriel
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 074568758X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description
Where do we come from? Are we merely a cluster of elementaryparticles in a gigantic world receptacle? And what does it allmean? In this highly original new book, the philosopher Markus Gabrielchallenges our notion of what exists and what it means to exist. Hequestions the idea that there is a world that encompasseseverything like a container life, the universe, and everythingelse. This all-inclusive being does not exist and cannot exist. Forthe world itself is not found in the world. And even when we thinkabout the world, the world about which we think is obviously notidentical with the world in which we think. For, as we are thinkingabout the world, this is only a very small event in the world.Besides this, there are still innumerable other objects and events:rain showers, toothaches and the World Cup. Drawing on the recenthistory of philosophy, Gabriel asserts that the world cannot existat all, because it is not found in the world. Yet with theexception of the world, everything else exists; even unicornson the far side of the moon wearing police uniforms. Revelling in witty thought experiments, word play, and thecourage of provocation, Markus Gabriel demonstrates the necessityof a questioning mind and the role that humour can play in comingto terms with the abyss of human existence.

Why We Exist

Why We Exist PDF Author: Marc D. Garrett
Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
ISBN: 1489706690
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Get Book

Book Description
Why do we exist? Where did the earth, sun, galaxy, and the entire universe come from? What is time, and does it even exist? Why does religion cause so much war? And in the end, what’s the point of it all? While scientists, religious leaders, and historians have all provided insight into the origins of existence and the causes of major world events, often these explanations are at worst contradictory or at best inconsistent. However, without tricks or speculation—and with some plain old common sense—is there a way to discover the answers to questions about our existence beyond these different and widely held seeds of thought? Why We Exist—Life, Science, and More provides an uncommon explanation about the origins of existence that overviews and synthesizes conclusions from the life sciences, physical sciences, and religion. Using common sense logic to show how topics like gravity, time, the universe, and war are all interrelated and point to the existence of a so-called “third entity”—an entity that must exist and of which everything is a part—we can walk away with a new and exciting knowledge. Answering these timeless questions about our existence can open our eyes and minds to a veritable new world of insight and inspiration. Taking this journey to discover fulfilling answers about why we exist will prove to be not only a fun and thought-provoking quest—it will also be both useful and meaningful to our continued lives.

Why Fish Don't Exist

Why Fish Don't Exist PDF Author: Lulu Miller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501160346
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.

The Mystery of Existence

The Mystery of Existence PDF Author: John Leslie
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470673559
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
This compelling study of the origins of all that exists, including explanations of the entire material world, traces the responses of philosophers and scientists to the most elemental and haunting question of all: why is anything here—or anything anywhere? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why not nothing? It includes the thoughts of dozens of luminaries from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas and Leibniz to modern thinkers such as physicists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, philosophers Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit, philosophers of religion Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, and the Dalai Lama. The first accessible volume to cover a wide range of possible reasons for the existence of all reality, from over 50 renowned thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, and the Dalai Lama Features insights by scientists, philosophers, and theologians Includes informative and helpful editorial introductions to each section Provides a wealth of suggestions for further reading and research Presents material that is both comprehensive and comprehensible

God: The Failed Hypothesis

God: The Failed Hypothesis PDF Author: Victor J. Stenger
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 161592003X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book

Book Description
Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology, while science has sat on the sidelines. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality. This book contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional God concept, as conventionally presented in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, like any other scientific hypothesis, physicist Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. He considers the latest Intelligent Design arguments as evidence of God's influence in biology. He looks at human behavior for evidence of immaterial souls and the possible effects of prayer. He discusses the findings of physics and astronomy in weighing the suggestions that the universe is the work of a creator and that humans are God's special creation. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. This paperback edition of the New York Times bestselling hardcover edition contains a new foreword by Christopher Hitchens and a postscript by the author in which he responds to reviewers' criticisms of the original edition.

When Einstein Walked with Gödel

When Einstein Walked with Gödel PDF Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717842
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book

Book Description
From Jim Holt, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Does the World Exist?, comes an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries in When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought. Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. Holt offers a painless and playful introduction to many of our most beautiful but least understood ideas, from Einsteinian relativity to string theory, and also invites us to consider why the greatest logician of the twentieth century believed the U.S. Constitution contained a terrible contradiction—and whether the universe truly has a future.

The Dark Forest

The Dark Forest PDF Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1466853433
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Get Book

Book Description
The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America PRAISE FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES: “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times • “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Fascinating.”—TIME • “Extraordinary.”—The New Yorker • “Wildly imaginative.”—Barack Obama • “Provocative.”—Slate • “A breakthrough book.”—George R. R. Martin • “Impossible to put down.”—GQ • “Absolutely mind-unfolding.”—NPR • “You should be reading Liu Cixin.”—The Washington Post The Dark Forest is the second novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion-in just four centuries' time. The aliens' human collaborators may have been defeated, but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information, means that Earth's defense plans are totally exposed to the enemy. Only the human mind remains a secret. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead. The Three-Body Problem Series The Three-Body Problem The Dark Forest Death's End Other Books by Cixin Liu Ball Lightning Supernova Era To Hold Up the Sky The Wandering Earth A View from the Stars At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Biocentrism

Biocentrism PDF Author: Robert Lanza
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458795179
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book

Book Description
Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world a US News and World Report cover story called him a genius and a renegade thinker, even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe. Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, toward doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universes genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around. In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe our own from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the readers ideas of life--time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal. The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.

A Universe from Nothing

A Universe from Nothing PDF Author: Lawrence Maxwell Krauss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 145162445X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
This is a provocative account of the astounding new answers to the most basic philosophical question: Where did the universe come from and how will it end?