› › The Universe Of Experience

The Varieties of Scientific Experience

Author : Carl Sagan

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 316 pages

File Size : 50,2 MB

Release : 2006-11-02

Category : Science

ISBN : 1101201835

Get eBook

Book Description

“Ann Druyan has unearthed a treasure. It is a treasure of reason, compassion, and scientific awe. It should be the next book you read.” —Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith “A stunningly valuable legacy left to all of us by a great human being. I miss him so.” —Kurt Vonnegut Carl Sagan's prophetic vision of the tragic resurgence of fundamentalism and the hope-filled potential of the next great development in human spirituality The late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, Sagan presents his views on a wide range of topics, including the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, creationism and so-called intelligent design, and a new concept of science as "informed worship." Originally presented at the centennial celebration of the famous Gifford Lectures in Scotland in 1985 but never published, this book offers a unique encounter with one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century.



The Universe of Experience

Author : Brian Rothery

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 223 pages

File Size : 13,26 MB

Release : 2017-09-08

Category : Science

ISBN : 1351302264

Get eBook

Book Description

Modern experience forces philosophy and social thought to confront the basic problems of value. Is this life worth caring about? How can we find a way between the deceit of fanatical belief and despair? In the view of Lancelot Law Whyte, the essential challenge to mankind today is an underlying nihilism promoting violence and frustrating sane policies on major social issues. Avoiding the seductive trap of utopianism, Whyte approaches this challenge by defining the terms of a potentially worldwide consensus of heart, mind, and will.In this volume, Whyte addresses the problems of despair and fanatical religious or political reactions that arise from despair. He begins with the basic problem of nihilism, or the tendency toward pessimism and self/other destruction that faces us at this point in human development. Rejecting all forms of religious sectarianism as separating God from the individual and people from each other, he discerns, as well, a fundamental disunity and incompleteness among the sciences that render them incapable of supplying a guide to social order. Whyte sees the universe as an arena of conflict between tendencies toward order and disorder with the former dominating and containing the latter. In place of science and traditional religion, Whyte draws upon what he sees as the unconscious tradition, a genius of the community, shared in degrees by all its members, that points mankind toward a better way of living.Whyte does not posit a state of perfection, nor does he suggest the end of human suffering. Instead he suggests that an integrated state of being, freed from the old mind-body dualism will be a new starting point in human evolution. Accessibly written and firmly rooted in science, philosophy, and history, The Universe of Experience will be of interest to sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers.



The Universe of Experience

Author : Lancelot Law Whyte

Publisher :

Page : 155 pages

File Size : 17,54 MB

Release : 1974

Category : Cosmology

ISBN : 9780061361432

Get eBook

Book Description



Beyond the Dynamical Universe

Author : Michael Silberstein

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 445 pages

File Size : 31,91 MB

Release : 2018-02-02

Category : Science

ISBN : 0192533835

Get eBook

Book Description

Theoretical physics and foundations of physics have not made much progress in the last few decades. Whether we are talking about unifying general relativity and quantum field theory (quantum gravity), explaining so-called dark energy and dark matter (cosmology), or the interpretation and implications of quantum mechanics and relativity, there is no consensus in sight. In addition, both enterprises are deeply puzzled about various facets of time including above all, time as experienced. The authors argue that, across the board, this impasse is the result of the "dynamical universe paradigm," the idea that reality is fundamentally made up of physical entities that evolve in time from some initial state according to dynamical laws. Thus, in the dynamical universe, the initial conditions plus the dynamical laws explain everything else going exclusively forward in time. In cosmology, for example, the initial conditions reside in the Big Bang and the dynamical law is supplied by general relativity. Accordingly, the present state of the universe is explained exclusively by its past. This book offers a completely new paradigm (called Relational Blockworld), whereby the past, present and future co-determine each other via "adynamical global constraints," such as the least action principle. Accordingly, the future is just as important for explaining the present as is the past. Most of the book is devoted to showing how Relational Blockworld resolves many of the current conundrums of both theoretical physics and foundations of physics, including the mystery of time as experienced and how that experience relates to the block universe.



The Wisdom of the World

Author : Rémi Brague

Publisher : University of Chicago Press

Page : 316 pages

File Size : 37,82 MB

Release : 2004-11

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 9780226070773

Get eBook

Book Description

When the ancient Greeks looked up into the heavens, they saw not just sun and moon, stars and planets, but a complete, coherent universe, a model of the Good that could serve as a guide to a better life. How this view of the world came to be, and how we lost it (or turned away from it) on the way to becoming modern, make for a fascinating story, told in a highly accessible manner by Rémi Brague in this wide-ranging cultural history. Before the Greeks, people thought human action was required to maintain the order of the universe and so conducted rituals and sacrifices to renew and restore it. But beginning with the Hellenic Age, the universe came to be seen as existing quite apart from human action and possessing, therefore, a kind of wisdom that humanity did not. Wearing his remarkable erudition lightly, Brague traces the many ways this universal wisdom has been interpreted over the centuries, from the time of ancient Egypt to the modern era. Socratic and Muslim philosophers, Christian theologians and Jewish Kabbalists all believed that questions about the workings of the world and the meaning of life were closely intertwined and that an understanding of cosmology was crucial to making sense of human ethics. Exploring the fate of this concept in the modern day, Brague shows how modernity stripped the universe of its sacred and philosophical wisdom, transforming it into an ethically indifferent entity that no longer serves as a model for human morality. Encyclopedic and yet intimate, The Wisdom of the World offers the best sort of history: broad, learned, and completely compelling. Brague opens a window onto systems of thought radically different from our own.



The Subject of Experience

Author : Galen Strawson

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 332 pages

File Size : 37,61 MB

Release : 2017

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 0198777884

Get eBook

Book Description

This book considers the conscious subject, the subject of experience, in particular the human subject-the self, the person. Galen Strawson examines the phenomenology of the self-he asks what is it like to have or be a self or to feel that one is or has a self-and the metaphysics of the self-Is there really such a thing as the self? If so, what is its nature? He develops a novel approach to the metaphysical questions out of the results of the phenomenological investigation, and argues, against those who say that the self is just the human being, that we can legitimately distinguish self and human being. At the same time he raises doubts about how long selves can be supposed to last, insofar as they are distinct from human beings. Moving on to the ethics and moral psychology of the self, Strawson asks whether we can really be said to lose anything in dying. He criticizes the popular notion of the narrative self, and emphasizes the differences between 'Endurers' or 'Diachronics'-people who feel that they are the same person when they consider their past and future-and 'Transients' or 'Episodics'-people who do not feel this. Strawson also considers the logic of the word T, the first-person pronoun, and the reflexive structure of conscious awareness, before examining Locke's, Humes and Kant's accounts of the mind and personal identity, and arguing that Locke and Hume have been badly mi sunder stood. The fourteen essays draw on literature and psychology as well as philosophy. Book jacket.



See You in the Cosmos

Author : Jack Cheng

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 322 pages

File Size : 10,77 MB

Release : 2017-02-28

Category : Juvenile Fiction

ISBN : 0399186379

Get eBook

Book Description

“I haven't read anything that has moved me this much since Wonder.” —Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places A space-obsessed boy and his dog, Carl Sagan, take a journey toward family, love, hope, and awe in this funny and moving novel for fans of Counting by 7s, Walk Two Moons, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. 11-year-old Alex Petroski loves space and rockets, his mom, his brother, and his dog Carl Sagan—named for his hero, the real-life astronomer. All he wants is to launch his golden iPod into space the way Carl Sagan (the man, not the dog) launched his Golden Record on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. From Colorado to New Mexico, Las Vegas to L.A., Alex records a journey on his iPod to show other lifeforms what life on earth, his earth, is like. But his destination keeps changing. And the funny, lost, remarkable people he meets along the way can only partially prepare him for the secrets he’ll uncover—from the truth about his long-dead dad to the fact that, for a kid with a troubled mom and a mostly not-around brother, he has way more family than he ever knew. Jack Cheng’s debut is full of joy, optimism, determination, and unbelievable heart. To read the first page is to fall in love with Alex and his view of our big, beautiful, complicated world. To read the last is to know he and his story will stay with you a long, long time. "Stellar." —Entertainment Weekly “Life-embracing.” —The Wall Street Journal "Works beautifully." —The New York Times Book Review “Irresistible.” —The Chicago Tribune “The best I've read in a long, long time.” —Holly Goldberg Sloan, author of Counting by 7s “Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.” —Kirkus, starred review “A propulsive stream-of-conscious dive.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “A gift—a miracle.” —Paul Griffin, author When Friendship Followed Me Home “Exuberant.” —Booklist "Full of the real kind of magic." —Ally Condie, author of Matched "Absorbing, irresistible." —Common Sense Media “Incredible.” —BookRiot "Full of innocence and unwavering optimism." —SLC "Inspiring." —Time for Kids “Powerfully affirms our human capacity for grace and love and understanding.” —Gary D. Schmidt, author of Okay for Now



Probable Impossibilities

Author : Alan Lightman

Publisher : Vintage

Page : 209 pages

File Size : 39,72 MB

Release : 2022-04-19

Category : Science

ISBN : 0593081323

Get eBook

Book Description

The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.



The Sacred Universe

Author : Thomas Berry

Publisher : Columbia University Press

Page : 208 pages

File Size : 25,40 MB

Release : 2009

Category : Nature

ISBN : 9780231149525

Get eBook

Book Description

A leading scholar, cultural historian, and Catholic priest who spent more than fifty years writing about our engagement with the Earth, Thomas Berry possessed prophetic insight into the rampant destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of species. In this book he makes a persuasive case for an interreligious dialogue that can better confront the environmental problems of the twenty-first century. These erudite and keenly sympathetic essays represent Berry's best work, covering such issues as human beings' modern alienation from nature and the possibilities of future, regenerative forms of religious experience. Asking that we create a new story of the universe and the emergence of the Earth within it, Berry resituates the human spirit within a sacred totality.



Journey of the Universe

Author : Brian Thomas Swimme

Publisher : Yale University Press

Page : 191 pages

File Size : 50,22 MB

Release : 2011-06-28

Category : Science

ISBN : 0300171900

Get eBook

Book Description

The authors tell the epic story of the universe from an inspired new perspective, weaving the findings of modern science together with enduring wisdom found in the humanistic traditions of the West, China, India, and indigenous peoples. This book is part of a larger project that includes a documentary film, educational DVD series, and Web site.