Why Does the World Exist? – An Existential Detective Story - Hardcover

Holt, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871404095 ISBN 13: 9780871404091

Publisher: Liveright, 2012

Synopsis

HardCover. Pub Date :2012-08-22 Pages: 309 Language: English Publisher: WW Norton 2012 New York Times Top 10 Book of the YearSlate.com 2012 Staff PickIn this astonishing and profound work. an irreverent sleuth traces the riddle of existence from the ancient world to modern times.Whether framed philosophically as Why is there a world rather than nothing at all or more colloquially as But. Mommy. who made God the metaphysical mystery about how we came into existence remains the most fractious and fascinating question of all time. Following in the footsteps of Christopher Hitchens. Roger Penrose. and even Stephen Hawking. Jim Holt emerges with an engrossing narrative that traces our latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. As he takes on the role of cosmological detective. the brilliant yet slyly humorous Holt contends that we might have been too narrow in limiting ...

About this title

Review

... an eclectic mix of theology, cutting-edge science (of the cosmological and particle-physics variety) and extremely abstract philosophising, rendered (mostly) accessible by Mr. Holt's facility with analogies and clear, witty language.

Winding its way to no reassuringly tidy conclusion, this narrative ultimately humanizes the huge metaphysical questions Holt confronts, endowing them with real-life significance. A potent synthesis of philosophy and autobiography.

The author takes on the origin of everything in this wonderfully ambitious book encompassing mathematics, theology, physics, ethics and more.--Michael S. Roth

The pleasure of this book is watching the match: the staggeringly inventive human mind slamming its fantastic conjectures over the net, the universe coolly returning every serve.... Holt traffics in wonder, a word whose dual meanings--the absence of answers; the experience of awe--strike me as profoundly related. His book is not utilitarian. You can't profit from it, at least not in the narrow sense.... And yet it does what real science writing should: It helps us feel the fullness of the problem.--Kathryn Schulz

A guided tour of ideas, theories and arguments about the origins of the universe.... Through discussions with philosophers of religion and science, humanists, biologists, string theorists, as well as research into the scholarship of days past--from Heidegger, Parmenides, Pythagoras and others--and an interview with John Updike, Holt provides a master's-level course on the theories and their detractors. The interludes find the author positioning himself as an existential gumshoe, but also working through the sudden loss of a pet and, later, the death of his mother. Holt may not answer the question of his title, but his book deepens the appreciation of the mystery.

It's the mystery William James called "the darkest in all philosophy" "[W]hy is there something rather than nothing?" For Jim Holt, it is a question that may never find an answer, but one endlessly worth asking. In this highly engaging book, Holt visits great thinkers in mathematics, quantum physics, artificial intelligence, theology, philosophy, and literature. These conversations don't lead him toward any conclusion, but they make for a lively, thoughtful read, whether your worldview tends toward Spinoza (in which "reality is a self-sustaining causal loop: the world creates us, and we in turn create the world") or like Stephen Hawking, still searching for the final theory of everything.--Kate Tuttle

He [Jim Holt] leaves us with the question Stephen Hawking once asked but couldn't answer, 'Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing?'--Ron Rosenbaum

A reminder that the quest for foundational truths is not only a supremely human activity but also one that brings us, if not absolute truth (which may be unknowable), at least better and better approximations of the truth... A gifted essayist and critic... Holt intersperses his intellectual investigation with brief but revealing glimpses of his own life, including the death of his mother, when existential musings on the nature of being seem anything but abstract.--Jay Tolson

[Holt] is a spirited interlocutor and a deft explainer, patiently making sense of subjects ranging from Platonism to quantum mechanics, while nonetheless marveling at their seemingly fantastical nature... This cheerful persistence--combined with anecdotes celebrating the thrills of travel, good food, and drink--helps to sweeten what is, finally, a somber vision, in which reality may take the form of 'infinite mediocrity' and 'the life of the universe, like each of our lives, may be a mere interlude between two nothings.'

Book Description

An irreverent sleuth tackles the riddle of existence that has puzzled man since the dawn of time

Edition details

• Publisher: Liveright
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0871404095
• ISBN 13: 9780871404091
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320