The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser
By downloading the on-line The Island Of Knowledge: The Limits Of Science And The Search For Meaning, By Marcelo Gleiser publication here, you will certainly get some benefits not to opt for the book establishment. Merely link to the net and start to download and install the web page link we discuss. Now, your The Island Of Knowledge: The Limits Of Science And The Search For Meaning, By Marcelo Gleiser prepares to take pleasure in reading. This is your time as well as your peacefulness to get all that you desire from this publication The Island Of Knowledge: The Limits Of Science And The Search For Meaning, By Marcelo Gleiser
The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser
Best PDF Ebook The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser
Do all questions have answers? How much can we know about the world? Is there such a thing as an ultimate truth?To be human is to want to know, but what we are able to observe is only a tiny portion of what’s “out there.” In The Island of Knowledge, physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence. In so doing, he reaches a provocative conclusion: science, the main tool we use to find answers, is fundamentally limited.These limits to our knowledge arise both from our tools of exploration and from the nature of physical reality: the speed of light, the uncertainty principle, the impossibility of seeing beyond the cosmic horizon, the incompleteness theorem, and our own limitations as an intelligent species. Recognizing limits in this way, Gleiser argues, is not a deterrent to progress or a surrendering to religion. Rather, it frees us to question the meaning and nature of the universe while affirming the central role of life and ourselves in it. Science can and must go on, but recognizing its limits reveals its true mission: to know the universe is to know ourselves.Telling the dramatic story of our quest for understanding, The Island of Knowledge offers a highly original exploration of the ideas of some of the greatest thinkers in history, from Plato to Einstein, and how they affect us today. An authoritative, broad-ranging intellectual history of our search for knowledge and meaning, The Island of Knowledge is a unique view of what it means to be human in a universe filled with mystery.
The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser- Amazon Sales Rank: #179012 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x 1.00" w x 5.40" l, 1.31 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Review  [The Island of Knowledge] is a path forward, toward a new, more complete and more enlightened vision of this gift called science.... In the hands of a lesser writer, recognizing that there's no final destination for scientific endeavor could have devolved into another form of scientific triumphalism  a  more-answers-equals-more-questions-into-the-brave-future' kind of riff. But that is not the territory Marcelo wants to explore. Instead, he takes seriously the limits imposed by an ever-growing boundary between our island of knowledge and the oceans of unknowing. With unflinching honesty he asks what the boundary implies at the deepest levels for science and the human prospect."--Adam Frank, NPR's 13.7 blog
About the Author Marcelo Gleiser is Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College. He has published numerous popular works, including an essay, “Emergent Realities in the Cosmos,” which was featured in 2003’s Best American Science Writing, and three previous books: The Dancing Universe, The Prophet and the Astronomer, and A Tear at the Edge of Creation.
Where to Download The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser
Most helpful customer reviews
88 of 94 people found the following review helpful. Book never gets past the analogy. By A. MILLER I bought this book to support Gleiser and the 13.7 staff at NPR. I love the work they do and the human perspective they bring to the sciences. That being said, this piece of work fell short as a compelling cover-to-cover book. For one, I feel I was misled about the actual contents of the book. I understand authors are often at the whims of their publishers, but I can tell this book was trying to be about the limits of scientific understanding, how these limits affect science, and how they affect humanity. Unfortunately, the author's commentary on these topics could probably be condensed into 50 pages. The rest of the book is a meandering, if not pedantic, history of the human pursuit of knowledge. If I were interested in a history of philosophy or science, there are certainly many books which accomplish this better than Gleiser. If I felt that this history added a lot of value to the author's main argument, I could understand the attention it is paid. In reality, the author makes a clever analogy (about the "Island of Knowledge") towards the beginning of the book and then makes tenuous, disconnected references to this analogy as he reviews the past 2500 years of scientific history. I actually love the author's analogy and fully agree with his philosophy on the limits of human understanding. I really wish the bulk of the book were more directly correlated with this topic. I hate to say it, but, given that Gleiser never delves really deeply into dissecting his analogy, the book comes across as a blog topic that got stretched very thinly into the length of a book. I don't regret my purchase because I'm happy to support Gleiser and co., but the book is certainly not worth its price as it stands alone.
89 of 97 people found the following review helpful. A Wonderful book at the intersection of science and the meaning of life By john messerly (from reasonandmeaning.com)There is a new book on the intersection between science and the meaning of life: The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning by Marcelo Gleiser, the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College.Gleiser's main thesis is that our observations yield only an "island of knowledge."Thus there are limits to science's ability to answer fundamental philosophical questions. These limits to our knowledge arise both from the tools we use to explore reality and the nature of physical reality itself. What we can know is limited by the speed of light, the uncertainty principle, the incompleteness theorem, and our own intellectual limitations. Recognizing these limits does not entail abandoning science and embracing religion. We should continue our scientific investigation of the nature of the cosmos, Gleiser argues, for by coming to know the universe we come to know ourselves.Obviously Gleiser is right--there are limits to scientific knowledge as the incompleteness theorem and uncertainty principle strongly suggest. As the island of our knowledge grows, so too does the ocean of uncertainty which surrounds it. Still science gives us our best chance to understand the nature of the cosmos, and hence the the most firm foundation upon which to understand the meaning of the cosmos.Gleiser also argues that science and religion focus on the same question.The urge to know our origins and our place in the cosmos is a defining part of our humanity. Creation myths of all ages ask questions not so different from those scientists ask today, when they ponder the quantum creation of the Universe “out of nothing,” or whether our Universe is but one among countless others, all of them exhalations of a timeless multiverse. The specifics of the questions and of the answers are, of course, entirely different, but not the motivation: to understand where we came from and what our cosmic role is, if any. To the authors of those myths, ultimate questions of origins were solely answerable through invocations of the sacred, as only the timeless could create that which exists within time. To those who do not believe that answers to such questions remain exclusively within the realm of the sacred, the challenge is to scrutinize the reach of our rational explanations of the world and examine how far they can go in making sense of reality and, by extension, of ultimate questions of origins.Gleiser's point here is uncontroversial--similar desires motivate creation myths and scientific cosmology. And for popularity, religious myths win hands down. But for those not attracted to religious answers Gleiser's suggestion is insightful. They must make epistemic judgments and reconcile themselves with whatever comfort limited knowledge provides. This may not be an easy way to live, but it is an authentic way. Surely that counts for something. Gleiser's book makes for a thoughtful read on a timeless topic, especially when humans are in desperate need of new narratives to replace the old religious ones.
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful. "The Island of Knowledge" by Marcelo Gleiser By weston This book is ostensibly about the inherent limits of scientific knowledge, but actually provides an excellent summary of what is known (at least in physics) and traces its development from the Greeks onward, in the process of identifying these limits. One limit arises from the cosmic horizon of 13.8 billion years, before which the universe was opaque to radiation, implying that we can never receive information about regions further away than 13.8 billion light-years. Uncertainity at the sub-microsopic scale is due to the quantum weirdness of knowing only the probability of a particles's location until it is measured, the inherent uncertainty of that measurement and the entanglement (action at a distance) between particles Early Western philosophers looked for a unified theory of the nature of matter. Thales (600 BCE) thought "all stuffs of the world were but different manifestations of a primal stuff, the embodiment of a reality always in flux". Parmenides, somewhat later, wrote "that what is can not change, for it then becomes what it is not". According to Lucretius (50 BCE), Leucippus and Democritus thought that all things were made of unchanging atoms moving in a void under various forces, assuming different shapes and forms under different forces by the reordering of numerous atoms. Aristotle posited a bottom-up natural arrangement of his four basic substances--earth, water, air and fire--to explain why a body moved up or down when displaced from its natural place. As the author notes, scientific inquiry is an ongoing process, implying an ever-changing perception of reality. Aristotle's version of physical reality dominated western thought until Galileo, Kepler and Newton in the 17th century turned to measurement of physical phenomena and the construction of natural laws to explain those measurements, thereby constructing a new version of physical reality which was embellished over the next two centuries, notably by Maxwell's introduction of the electromagnetic field. Then, early in the 20th century this classical version of physical reality was shattered by Einstein's replacement of Newton's force-at-a-distance concept of gravity by the warping of space, and the quantum theory of Heisenberg and Schrodinger raised issues of how to understand the fundamental laws that govern physical reality. The author provides an enlightening discussion of the many fascinating aspects of 20th century physics, from which he concludes that there may be inherent limits to what science (physics) can say about physical reality, and these limits are more than just limitations in technology. Many physicists, myself included, would stop short of this conclusion, noting the author's earlier statement that scientific inquiry is an ongoing process, implying an ever-changing perception of reality.
See all 65 customer reviews... The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo GleiserThe Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser PDF
The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser iBooks
The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser ePub
The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser rtf
The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser AZW
The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning, by Marcelo Gleiser Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar