[PDF] The Philosopher At The End Of The Universe eBook

Author : Mark Rowlands
Publisher : Random House
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 42,37 MB
Release : 2012-02-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1448116678

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'It's Schopenhauer and the will. It's Plato, it's Hume, Baudrillard and the concept of the Nietzschean superman!' Keanu Reeves on The Matrix The Philosopher at the End of the Universe allows anyone to understand basic philosophical concepts from the comfort of their armchair, through the plots and characters of spectacular blockbusting science-fiction movies. Learn about: The Nature of Reality from The Matrix; Good and Evil from Star Wars; Morality from Aliens; Personal Identity from Total Recall; The Mind-Body Dilemma from Terminator; Free Will from Minority Report; Death and the Meaning of Life from Blade Runner; and much more. As someone once said, things must be said and knowledge known, and the cast list assembled to tell us does not disappoint: Tom Cruise, Plato, Harrison Ford, Immanuel Kant, Sigourney Weaver, Friedrich Nietzsche, Keanu Reeves and Rene Descartes. From characters in the biggest films (with lots of explosions and bad language) to Ludwig Wittgenstein (no explosions and too much language in general), hear all the arguments. I think, therefore... I'll be back!

Author : N. Joll
Publisher : Springer
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 33,8 MB
Release : 2016-04-30
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0230392652

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy provides an excellent way of looking at some intriguing issues in philosophy, from vegetarianism and Artificial Intelligence to God, space and time. This is an entertaining yet thought provoking volume for students, philosophers and fans of The Hitchhiker's series.

Author : Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 37,69 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199603693

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Tests the views and metaphor of 19th-century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick against a variety of contemporary views on ethics, determining that they are defensible and thus providing a defense of objectivism in ethics and of hedonistic utilitarianism.

Author : Brian Greene
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 39,9 MB
Release : 2020-02-18
Category : Science
ISBN : 1524731684

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose, from the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe. "Few humans share Greene’s mastery of both the latest cosmological science and English prose." —The New York Times Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal. From particles to planets, consciousness to creativity, matter to meaning—Brian Greene allows us all to grasp and appreciate our fleeting but utterly exquisite moment in the cosmos.

Author : Lawrence M. Krauss
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 19,57 MB
Release : 2012-01-10
Category : Science
ISBN : 1451624476

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Bestselling author and acclaimed physicist Lawrence Krauss offers a paradigm-shifting view of how everything that exists came to be in the first place. “Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing?” One of the few prominent scientists today to have crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss describes the staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories that demonstrate not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing. With a new preface about the significance of the discovery of the Higgs particle, A Universe from Nothing uses Krauss’s characteristic wry humor and wonderfully clear explanations to take us back to the beginning of the beginning, presenting the most recent evidence for how our universe evolved—and the implications for how it’s going to end. Provocative, challenging, and delightfully readable, this is a game-changing look at the most basic underpinning of existence and a powerful antidote to outmoded philosophical, religious, and scientific thinking.

Author : Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 13,21 MB
Release : 2012-02-21
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 1442408928

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Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

Author : Mark Rowlands
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 49,77 MB
Release : 2005-09
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780312322366

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Sci-Phi demonstrates how anyone can grasp the basic concepts of philosophy while still holding a bucket of popcorn. Mark Rowlands makes philosophy utterly relevant to our everyday lives and reveals its most potent messages using nothing more than a little humor and the plotlines of some of the most spectacular, expensive, high-octane films on the planet. Learn about: The Nature of Reality from The Matrix, Good and Evil from Star Wars, Morality from Aliens, Personal Identity from Total Recall, The Mind-Body dilemma from Terminator, Free Will from Minority Report, Death and the Meaning of Life from Blade Runner, and much more. A search for knowledge about ourselves and the world around us with a star-studded cast that includes: Tom Cruise, Plato, Harrison Ford, Immanuel Kant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigourney Weaver, Rene? Descartes, and Keanu Reeves. Rowlands anchors his discussions in easily understood everyday terms and relates them in a manner easy to identify with. Interspersed with a ready joke or two, he wonderfully explains why those SciFi movies we love so much are much deeper than they appear to be on the surface. Mark Rowlands's entertaining and stimulating guide is perfect for anyone searching for knowledge of the world around us. If Keanu can understand Descartes surely everyone can.

Author : Thomas Nagel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 141 pages
File Size : 29,93 MB
Release : 2012-11-22
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0199919755

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The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Author : Clément Vidal
Publisher : Springer
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 25,61 MB
Release : 2014-05-16
Category : Science
ISBN : 3319050621

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In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic? Are we alone in the universe? What is the role of intelligent life, if any, in cosmic evolution? Grounded in science and committed to philosophical rigor, this book presents an evolutionary worldview where the rise of intelligent life is not an accident, but may well be the key to unlocking the universe's deepest mysteries. Vidal shows how the fine-tuning controversy can be advanced with computer simulations. He also explores whether natural or artificial selection could hold on a cosmic scale. In perhaps his boldest hypothesis, he argues that signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are already present in our astrophysical data. His conclusions invite us to see the meaning of life, evolution and intelligence from a novel cosmological framework that should stir debate for years to come.

Author : David Merritt
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 41,99 MB
Release : 2020-04-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 1108665683

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Dark matter is a fundamental component of the standard cosmological model, but in spite of four decades of increasingly sensitive searches, no-one has yet detected a single dark-matter particle in the laboratory. An alternative cosmological paradigm exists: MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics). Observations explained in the standard model by postulating dark matter are described in MOND by proposing a modification of Newton's laws of motion. Both MOND and the standard model have had successes and failures – but only MOND has repeatedly predicted observational facts in advance of their discovery. In this volume, David Merritt outlines why such predictions are considered by many philosophers of science to be the 'gold standard' when it comes to judging a theory's validity. In a world where the standard model receives most attention, the author applies criteria from the philosophy of science to assess, in a systematic way, the viability of this alternative cosmological paradigm.