Tue 11 Mar 2008
I randomly found this book in the in the sciences section of a local book store and decided to buy it given that it was only about ten dollars. I was pleasantly surprised with the depth of the book, the readability, and the commentary of the author on applying the latest understanding of our physical world to the long-standing philosophical questions such as those dealing with determination and free will.
The book starts out by giving a summary statement of physical and philosophical advancements to year of the first publication (1943). For me, the historical accounts of philosophical advancement was very interesting given my ignorance of the subject. I was surprised to learn that Gottfried Leibniz, one of the fathers of calculus, had also tried to create a operational logic system to make philosophy universal and on par with mathematical proofs. Unfortunately he failed and to this day this universal language is still missing. The physical overview spends substantial time on new discoveries in quantum mechanics and goes over the probabilistic nature of the universe and ties this together with philosophical understanding of reality, knowledge and will. I will not spoil the conclusions, however, I will mention that they are well stated and supported.
Besides the substantial new (to me) content of this book, I found the book to be easily readable and understandable. The book was very complete and even offered references for further study of various intricate subjects. The organization of the book superb where each chapter built on information from the previous chapters and everything flowed together. I highly recommend it does a good job of provoking critical thought and introducing the reader to questions regarding our position and some of the motivations for the way we carry out our lives.
ISBN 0-484-24117-3 (This is the ISBN number off the back of the book, however, I noticed that this book is a little hard to find. A title and author search might work better than the ISBN.)
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March 16th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Anyone with ‘Sir’ before their name should automatically get good reviews. Seriously though, will this be like watching The Matrix (the first one at least) or is it a bit different?
March 17th, 2008 at 10:35 am
That would depend on what you know about the Matrix to start out with. This is a good review of a few centuries of philosophy and how these notions mesh with “recent” advances in physics. The book definitely poses some good questions to think about.