Physics Philosophy

In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein.

"Temporal Voyage" is a fascination-fueled journey that plunges readers into the enigma of time travel. From discerning its theoretical beginnings to evaluating its scientific implications, this eBook encompasses a full spectrum of engaging insights and in-depth knowledge about the science and philosophies of time travel. Our first encounter strikes at the core as we delve into the concept, examining various theories and philosophies that lay the foundation for temporal exploration. The adventure continues with an in-depth look into the physics that could potentially make this theoretical ...

In Zoom, Bob Berman explores how motion shapes every aspect of the universe, literally from the ground up. With an informative and entertaining style and a knack for distilling the wondrous, Berman spans astronomy, geology, biology, meteorology, and the history of science, uncovering how clouds stay aloft, how the earth's rotation curves a home run's flight, and why a mosquito's familiar whine resembles a telephone's dial tone.

As smartphones, supercomputers, supercolliders, and AI propel us into an ever more unfamiliar future, How to Speak Science takes us on a rollicking historical tour of the greatest discoveries and ideas that make today's cutting-edge technologies possible. Wanting everyone to be able to "speak" science, YouTube science guru Bruce Benamran explains - as accessibly and wittily as in his acclaimed videos - the fundamental ideas of the physical world: matter, life, the solar system, light, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, and much more.

As we navigate through life we instinctively model time as having a flowing present that divides a fixed past from open future. This model develops in childhood and is deeply saturated within our language, thought, and behavior, affecting our conceptions of the universe, freedom, and the self. Yet as central as it is to our lives, physics seems to have no room for this flowing present. What Makes Time Special? demonstrates this claim in detail and then turns to two novel positive tasks.

For millennia, people have asked questions about the nature of matter. In the 20th century, this curiosity led to an unprecedented outburst of scientific discovery that changed the course of history. In The Matter of Everything, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged these groundbreaking experiments.

We take time for granted as it passes during every moment of our existence. Other things may change, but time remains constant and predictable. The past, the present, and the future exist within a harmonious, reliable, and never-changing system. Or at least that’s how it seems. It was Albert Einstein who, in 1905, first theorized that time might not be quite as straightforward as that. In one of the most influential papers on physics ever published[1], he proposed something called “time dilatation.”

By the author of The Science Delusion, a detailed account of how science can authenticate spirituality. In this pioneering book, Rupert Sheldrake shows how science helps validate seven practices on which all religions are built and which are part of our common human heritage. The effects of spiritual practices are now being investigated scientifically as never before, and many studies have shown that religious and spiritual practices generally make people happier and healthier.

In researching one of history's greatest scientific quests, a mission to measure the Earth and define the meter, Ken Alder stumbled on a 200-year-old secret: The meter, it turns out, is in error. This is a story of two men, a secret, and a timeless human dilemma: is it permissible to perpetuate a small lie in the service of a larger truth?

Stephen Hawking is one of the most remarkable figures of our time, a Cambridge genius who has earned international celebrity as a brilliant theoretical physicist and become an inspiration and revelation to those who have witnessed his courageous triumph over disability. This is Hawking's life story by Kitty Ferguson, who has had special help from Hawking himself and his close associates and who has a gift for translating the language of theoretical physics for non-scientists.

The war for the future will not be fought with armies. It will be fought with whispers. When Maya Chen-Nakamura collapses during her keynote on conscious capitalism, it's more than a medical emergency—it's the latest chapter in a four-generation cycle that has claimed every visionary in her family. Her daughter Aria's research reveals a chilling pattern: innovation, success, then systemic breakdown at increasingly younger ages. But this personal tragedy masks a far grander design. Buried in the family archives is a secret her uncle David has hidden for decades—the business card of Kenji...

Superconductivity is one of the most exciting areas of research in physics today. Outlining the history of its discovery and the race to understand its many mysterious and counterintuitive phenomena, this Very Short Introduction audiobook explains in accessible terms the theories that have been developed and how they have influenced other areas of science, including the Higgs boson of particle physics and ideas about the early universe.

A thrilling scientific investigation and the portrait of an extraordinary genius, The Seashell on the Mountaintop gives us new insight into our planet, revealing how we learned to read the story told to us by the Earth itself, written in rock and stone.

In the tradition of Daniel Boorstin, the co-founder of Omni delivers an original work of history that demonstrates why modern science rests on a foundation built by ancient and medieval non-European societies. "If you think that modern science is rooted in the golden age of Greece, you owe it to yourself to [hear this] book," says Library Journal.

Drawing on quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, chaos and complexity theory, materials science and more, The Art of Physics reveals the hidden, surprising, and sometimes beautiful ways in which physics can help us to make sense of an unpredictable world. Ultimately, it shows how by embracing the paradoxes and uncertainty at the core of physics, we can unlock a deeper understanding of ourselves and our universe.

Both pseudoscience and science fiction (SF) are creative endeavors that have little in common with academic science, beyond the superficial trappings of jargon and subject matter. The most obvious difference between the two is that pseudoscience is presented as fact, not fiction. This engaging and well-researched audiobook explores a wide range of intriguing similarities and differences between pseudoscience and the fictional science found in SF.

What is the connection between physics and consciousness? In this groundbreaking new audiobook, Samuel Avery presents the quantum screen, a paradigm-shifting model of perceptual consciousness and of the world. This model looks to the enigmas of modern physics to demonstrate the primacy of consciousness - the essential oneness of spirit and matter.

In this fascinating collection of articles and speeches, Albert Einstein reflects not only on the scientific method at work in his own theoretical discoveries, but eloquently expresses a great appreciation for his scientific contemporaries and forefathers, including Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr. While Einstein is renowned as one of the foremost innovators of modern science, his discoveries uniquely his own, through his own words it becomes clear that Einstein viewed himself as only the most recent in a long line of scientists driven to create new ways of understanding the world and to prove their scientific theories.

Few recognize how the Great War, the industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918, shaped Einstein’s life and work. While Einstein never held a rifle, he formulated general relativity blockaded in Berlin, literally starving. He lost 50 pounds in three months, unable to communicate with his most important colleagues. Some of those colleagues fought against rabid nationalism; others were busy inventing chemical warfare - scientists trapped in the power plays of empire. Meanwhile, Einstein struggled to craft relativity and persuade the world that it was correct.

Does science have all the answers? Can it even deal with abstract reasoning that reaches beyond the world experienced by us? How can we be so sure that the physical world is sufficiently ordered to be intelligible to humans? How is it that mathematics, a product of human minds, can unlock the secrets of the physical universe? Are all such questions to be ruled out as inadmissible if science cannot settle them? Metaphysics has traditionally been understood as reasoning beyond the reach of science, sometimes even claiming realities that are beyond its grasp.