Why Does the World Exist?
"Why is there a world rather than nothing at all?" remains the darkest and most enduring of all metaphysical mysteries. Following in the footsteps of Christopher Hitchens, Roger Penrose, and even Stephen Hawking, Jim Holt now enters this fractious debate with his lively and deeply informed narrative that traces the latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. The slyly humorous Holt takes on the role of cosmological detective, suggesting that we might have been too narrow in limiting our suspects to Yahweh vs. the Big Bang. Tracking down an eccentric Oxford philosopher, a Physics Nobel Laureate, a French Buddhist monk who lived with the Dalai Lama, and John Updike just before he died, Holt pursues unexplored angles to this cosmic puzzle. As he pieces together a solution--one that sheds new light on the question of God and the meaning of existence--he offers brisk philosophical asides on time and eternity, consciousness, and the arithmetic of nothingness. "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....
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What Hacker News says
- Good book on this topic by Jim Holt:
"Why Does the World Exist? (An Existential Detective Story)
- "Why Does The World Exist?" is a fun book-length tour of the various ways people try to answer this question.
- Jim Holt's book "Why Does the World Exist?" is an interesting tour through different approaches to this topic.
- I think it would depend on what you’re into, but these are my picks:
Quantum Electrodynamics (Feynman): A summary of how almost EVERYTHING works (albeit explained simplistically).
Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (great insights / worldly wisdom from one of the world’s greatest investors).
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (Great overview of mathematics).
Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications (Great QM book).
Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization (Great leadership / management insights).
Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (An extremely simplified historical overview of how we got here).
The Book of Disquiet (Serpent's Tail Classics) (Random journaling from one of the world’s greatest prose writers: Fernando Pessoa).
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Excellent explanation on how computers work from bottom -> top).
The Machinery of Life (Includes excellent visuals in biology).
The Character of Physical Law (Great insights in physics by Feynman).
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Great book on business process improvement).
How to Win Friends & Influence People (Nothing groundbreaking, but still a worthy read).
Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming (Great info and insights from some of the greatest software developers of all time).
The Periodic Table (Great read and some of the greatest prose writing you’ll ever encounter).
- I'd also recommend "Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story", by Jim Holt. https://cmdev.com/isbn/0871403595
- Well, I'm certainly open to being convinced otherwise. And I have made efforts to understand the world. Existential thinking is not foreign to me, in the slightest. That's lead me to - among others - books like "Why does the world exist" by Jim Holt.
Ultimately, despite everything I've read and watched, including an upbringing in the Christian church... I can only draw the conclusion that we just don't know. We have no idea if there's a super being, but there's decent reason to BELIEVE that there isn't. Belief ironically, IS what it boils down to. I just don't believe in 2019, that the likelihood is an all present God.
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