Why Does the World Exist - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Why Does the World Exist write by Jim Holt. This book was released on 2012-07-17. Why Does the World Exist available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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?: An Existential Detective Story
Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story write by Jim Holt. This book was released on 2012-07-16. Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Washington Post Notable Non-Fiction of 2013 “I can imagine few more enjoyable ways of thinking than to read this book.”—Sarah Bakewell, New York Times Book Review, front-page review Tackling the “darkest question in all of philosophy” with “raffish erudition” (Dwight Garner, New York Times), author Jim Holt explores the greatest metaphysical mystery of all: why is there something rather than nothing? This runaway bestseller, which has captured the imagination of critics and the public alike, traces our latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. Holt adopts the role of cosmological detective, traveling the globe to interview a host of celebrated scientists, philosophers, and writers, “testing the contentions of one against the theories of the other” (Jeremy Bernstein, Wall Street Journal). As he interrogates his list of ontological culprits, the brilliant yet slyly humorous Holt contends that we might have been too narrow in limiting our suspects to God versus the Big Bang. This “deft and consuming” (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times) narrative humanizes the profound questions of meaning and existence it confronts.
When Einstein Walked with Gödel
When Einstein Walked with Gödel - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook When Einstein Walked with Gödel write by Jim Holt. This book was released on 2018-05-15. When Einstein Walked with Gödel available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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 Mystery of Existence
The Mystery of Existence - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Mystery of Existence write by John Leslie. This book was released on 2013-04-22. The Mystery of Existence available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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
Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes
Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes write by Jim Holt. This book was released on 2008-07-17. Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. “Finally I understand what it is I’ve been laughing at all these years.”—Jimmy Kimmel From the best-selling author of Why Does the World Exist? comes this outrageous, uproarious compendium of absurdity, filth, racy paradox, and gratuitous offensiveness—just the kind of mature philosophical reflection readers have come to expect from the ever-entertaining Jim Holt. Indeed, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This is the first book to trace the evolution of the joke all the way from the standup comics of ancient Athens to the comedy-club Seinfelds of today. After exploring humor’s history in Part One, Holt delves into philosophy in Part Two: Wall Street jokes; jokes about rednecks and atheists, bulimics and politicians; jokes you missed if you didn’t go to a Catholic girls’ school; jokes about logic and existence itself . . . all became fodder for the grand theories of Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Wittgenstein in this heady mix of the high and low, of the ribald and profound, from America’s most beloved philosophical pundit.
