Physics Philosophy

I give this illustration to my students because a winning lottery number exponentially pales in comparison to the odds against them being alive and breathing (even if they nod off a bit here and there) at this very juncture in history. But in order to appreciate the anomaly of one's existence it is necessary to get a deeper understanding of the theory of large numbers.

This entertaining account, offering a plethora of little known facts and insights from previously classified military projects, shows how the real-world science of the Cold War followed in the footsteps of SF - and how the two together changed our perception of both science and scientists, and paved the way to the world we live in today.

In The Scientific Sherlock Holmes, James O'Brien provides an in-depth look at Sherlock Holmes's use of science in his investigations. Indeed, one reason for Holmes's appeal is his frequent use of the scientific method and the vast scientific knowledge which he drew upon to solve mysteries. For instance, in heart of the audiobook, the author reveals that Holmes was a pioneer of forensic science, making use of fingerprinting well before Scotland Yard itself had adopted the method.

This book explores the famous quantum debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. A clear and precise exposition of a most complicated issue concerning the implications of indeterminacy and photon entanglement.

This audiobook’s content and entertaining style will appeal equally to science-fiction enthusiasts and scholars, including cognitive and neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind. It is a refreshing romp through the science and science fiction of consciousness.

Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world, yet it is the strongest force in the universe. It was the first force to be recognised and described, yet it is the least understood. It is a 'force' that keeps your feet on the ground, yet no such force actually exists. Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?

For most of human history, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are - our religious beliefs, power structures, scientific advances and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. And that disconnect comes at a cost. In The Human Cosmos, Jo Marchant takes us on a tour through the history of humanity's relationship with the heavens.

Written for both the layman and the professional scientist, The Dimensional Structure of Consciousnessopens an astounding world and points out that further progress of science depends upon a transcendence of the material world. Samuels Avery opens a 'Pandora's box'... and presents a 'through the looking glass' glimpse of the structure of consciousness as the basis of our human experience. Written by Samuel Avery, author of The Buddha and the Quantum.

Condensed matter physics is what happens when atoms cluster together to make something of a size we can understand—something like a car, say, rather than a galaxy. It's what makes things hover in mid-air or crystals glow (thermoluminescence). It's also what we mean by magick. Join Felix Flicker on an empirical adventure in condensed matter physics, the scientific mechanism behind the mysteries of alchemy, transmogrification, and much more. This is the one-stop guide on how to harness the enigmatic workings of the natural world to become a thoroughly modern wizard.

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.

Why does one smoker die of lung cancer but another live to 100? The answer is 'The Hidden Half' - those random, unknowable variables that mess up our attempts to comprehend the world. We humans are very clever creatures - but we're idiots about how clever we really are. In this entertaining and ingenious book, Blastland reveals how in our quest to make the world more understandable, we lose sight of how unexplainable it often is. The result - from GDP figures to medicine - is that experts know a lot less than they think.

The original treatise introducing rational nondualism. What if Western thought is warped by an illusion so persuasive that it affects almost every aspect of our understanding, including modern science? Scientists look for objective knowledge. But suppose the distinction between the observer and the observed does not exist. This insight—called nondual awareness—is deeply counterintuitive; few grasp its full implications. Yet rational thought points to a nondual world, as articulated in Existential Rationalism. The realization forces us to reexamine the foundations of modern science: ...

We are told that modern science was invented in Europe, the product of great minds like Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. But this is wrong. Science is not, and has never been, a uniquely European endeavour. Horizons pushes beyond Europe, exploring the ways in which scientists from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific fit into the history of science, and arguing that it is best understood as a story of global cultural exchange.

The message of modern physics is that physical reality has, at its frontiers, all the aspects of a transcendent order. At the foundation of things, elementary particles can exert instantaneous long-distance influences on each other, can be meaningfully said to have mind-like properties, and can exist in states which are, as Heisenberg wrote, "not quite real, but between the idea of a thing and a real thing."

Ever wonder why onions make you cry? Or why lizards do pushups? Or why leaves change color in the fall? Don't worry, you're not alone. Acclaimed science writer and broadcaster Jay Ingram wonders the same things. After a long career of asking important questions (does time speed up as we age? How much Neanderthal is in me? Why do some animals throw their feces?), he's here to put our scientific quandaries to rest.

In the last 350-odd years, the international “scientific community” has come to be the bastion of consensus and concerted action, especially in the face of two global crises: disastrous climate change, and a deadly pandemic. How did “the scientific community” come into existence, and why does it work? Rivals is an attempt to answer these questions in the form of a brief historical overview, from the late seventeenth to the early twenty-first centuries.

It is not too often that a brilliant scientist is also a wonderfully gifted writer. Sir Arthur Eddington was both. Brought up as a Quaker (he was a pacifist during World War One), Eddington was by all accounts a brilliant mathematician and physicist, who eventually became a professor of astronomy at Cambridge University. Sir Arthur Eddington is perhaps most famous for partially confirming Albert Einstein's theory of relativity back in 1919.

Decía Carl Sagan que para hacer una tarta de manzana primero hay que crear el universo. Harry Cliff, prestigioso físico de la Universidad de Cambridge, emprende la búsqueda de la receta perfecta recogiendo los ingredientes a través del cosmos, en los núcleos de estrellas moribundas, y retrocediendo en el tiempo hasta la fracción de segundo inmediatamente posterior a la que todo se creó, para entender, entre otras muchas cosas, de dónde proviene la materia.

The Story of the Universe was inspired by a very old idea—that the universe is one river and that galaxies, stars, planets, and people are all whirls and eddies in the universal flow, arising in the universe as naturally as whirls and eddies arise in a fast-flowing river. The universe arose once upon a time in a place that created time and space. It spread in darkness like an exploding black hole until there was light. It was pure energy in pure symmetry—almost.

Embark on a captivating journey through the metaphysical ideas of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz with "Leibniz's Monads: Unraveling the Fabric of Reality." This thought-provoking exploration delves into Leibniz's concept of monads, simple substances that form the very essence of the universe. In easily understandable language, this book illuminates: Leibniz's life and historical context, grounding his philosophy in his time. The foundations of Leibniz's philosophy, including his critique of Cartesian and Spinozist thought. The intriguing concept of monads, their characteristics, and the ...