
The Blind Spot
Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience
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Narrated by:
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Perry Daniels
About this listen
In The Blind Spot, astrophysicist Adam Frank, theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, and philosopher Evan Thompson call for a revolutionary scientific worldview, where science includes-rather than ignores or tries not to see-humanity's lived experience as an inescapable part of our search for objective truth. They urge practitioners to reframe how science works for the sake of our future in the face of the planetary climate crisis and increasing science denialism.
When we try to understand reality only through external physical things imagined from this outside position, we lose sight of the necessity of experience. This is the Blind Spot, which the authors show lies behind our scientific conundrums about time and the origin of the universe, quantum physics, life, AI and the mind, consciousness, and Earth as a planetary system. The authors propose an alternative vision: scientific knowledge is a self-correcting narrative made from the world and our experience of it evolving together.
The Blind Spot goes where no science book goes, urging us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium.
©2024 Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson (P)2024 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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How much can we know about the world? In this audiobook physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence, the origin of the universe, the nature of reality, and the limits of knowledge. In so doing he reaches a provocative conclusion: Science, like religion, is fundamentally limited as a tool for understanding the world. As science and its philosophical interpretations advance, we face the unsettling recognition of how much we don't know.
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Island of knowledge
- By Joshua Kring on 07-26-15
By: Marcelo Gleiser
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This Way to the Universe
- A Theoretical Physicist's Journey to the Edge of Reality
- By: Michael Dine
- Narrated by: Michael Dine
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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This Way to the Universe is a celebration of the astounding, ongoing scientific investigations that have revealed the nature of reality at its smallest, at its largest, and at the scale of our daily lives. The enigmas that Professor Michael Dine discusses are like landmarks on a fantastic journey to the edge of the universe. Asked where to find out about the big bang, dark matter, the Higgs boson particle - the long cutting edge of physics right now - Dine had no single book he could recommend. This is his accessible, authoritative, and up-to-date answer.
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Interesting but far above my intellect
- By Richard M. on 04-25-23
By: Michael Dine
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Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills
- By: Steven Novella, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Steven Novella
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Original Recording
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No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.
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Same Material Different Title
- By rkeinc on 09-21-14
By: Steven Novella, and others
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All Things Are Full of Gods
- The Mysteries of Mind and Life
- By: David Bentley Hart
- Narrated by: Rachael Beresford
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In a blossoming garden located far outside all worlds, a group of aging Greek gods have gathered to discuss the nature of existence, the mystery of mind, and whether there is a transcendent God from whom all things come. Turning to Eros, Psyche asks, "Do you see this flower, my love?"
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It's all in the mind
- By Owen Kelly on 08-30-24
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Free Agents
- How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
- By: Kevin J. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Kevin J. Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose.
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Adding Clarity to Agency
- By Brad Caldwell on 10-10-23
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Continental Philosophy
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Simon Critchley
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In this enlightening Very Short Introduction, Simon Critchley shows us that Continental philosophy encompasses a distinct set of philosophical traditions and practices, with a compelling range of problems all too often ignored by the analytic tradition. He discusses the ideas and approaches of philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Habermas, Foucault, and Derrida. He also introduces key concepts such as existentialism, nihilism, and phenomonology, by explaining their place in the Continental tradition.
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narrator and book 5 star
- By Wesley Bishop on 10-11-24
By: Simon Critchley
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The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved
- How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry
- By: Mario Livio
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For thousands of years mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations, until they encountered the quintic equation, which resisted solution for three centuries. Working independently, two prodigies ultimately proved that the quintic cannot be solved by a simple formula. The first popular account of the mathematics of symmetry and order, The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved is told not through abstract formulas but in a beautifully written and dramatic account of the lives and work of some of the greatest and most intriguing mathematicians in history.
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Historical Perspective Appreciated
- By Michael Hanrahan on 01-22-20
By: Mario Livio
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Life as No One Knows It
- The Physics of Life's Emergence
- By: Sara Imari Walker
- Narrated by: Sara Imari Walker
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is.
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Fascinating thought patterns
- By John linden on 09-10-24
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Science Ideated
- The Fall of Matter and the Contours of the Next Mainstream Scientific Worldview
- By: Bernardo Kastrup
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Leading-edge empirical observations are increasingly difficult to reconcile with "scientific" materialism, with analytic idealism—the notion that reality, while equally amenable to scientific inquiry, is fundamentally mental—a leading contender to replace it. In this book, the broad body of empirical evidence and reasoning in favor of analytic idealism is reviewed in an accessible manner. The resulting argument anticipates a historically imminent transition to a scientific worldview that regards mind, not matter, as the ground of all reality.
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Narrator
- By Cappy on 10-19-22
By: Bernardo Kastrup
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The Secrets of Alchemy
- By: Lawrence M. Principe
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Secrets of Alchemy, Lawrence M. Principe, one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, brings alchemy out of the shadows and restores it to its important place in human history and culture. By surveying what alchemy was and how it began, developed, and overlapped with a range of ideas and pursuits, Principe illuminates the practice. He vividly depicts the place of alchemy during its heyday in early modern Europe, and then explores how alchemy has fit into wider views of the cosmos and humanity.
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Brilliant well-researched and witty
- By bukalemun on 12-14-23
A point that needed to be made.
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a resource worth reading in parallel to listening
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Dense audiobook but intriguing read
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Good book.
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