The Island of Knowledge Audiobook By Marcelo Gleiser cover art

The Island of Knowledge

The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

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The Island of Knowledge

By: Marcelo Gleiser
Narrated by: William Neenan
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Why discovering the limits to science may be the most powerful discovery of all.

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.

Gleiser shows that by abandoning the dualistic model that divides reality into the known and the unknown, we can embark on a third way based on the acceptance of our limitations. Only then, he argues, will we be truly able to experience freedom, for to be free in an age of science we cannot turn science into a god. Gleiser ultimately offers an uplifting exploration of humanity's longing to conquer the unknown and of science's power to transform and inspire.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2014 Marcelo Gleiser (P)2014 Audible Inc. History History & Philosophy Philosophy Science Astronomy Cosmology Mathematics Thought-Provoking Black Hole
Thought-provoking Ideas • Fascinating Viewpoints • Excellent Narration • Compelling Information • Brilliant Synthesis
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only interesting thing I heard was Newton had papers from Hermes Tri. or Thoth.
book is written by a scientist barely out of the materialistic mind set. his observances are beset with many of the presumptions scientists make. categorical imperatives that are only presumptions.
not worth listening to... IMHO

thanks

Boring

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If you are like me, you might find what you can't know more interesting than what you can know. For example, if you can come up with all the logical boundaires of a given set of things you want to know, filling that bucket with empirical data suddenly becomes much less interesting. Why? Because you can know a lot about that data before you go looking into the universe for it, you can understand the confines it will take, based upon the logical necessities you are bringing to your search. Maybe I just read too much Wittgenstein in college - as he approached this problem/situation from language - but this is where things get interesting. In this book the author does a great job of painting a picture of the knowable universe from both science AND philosophy. I was really impressed with him starting way back with philosphy 101 with pre-Socratics most people have never heard of (Thales) but who are the modern developers of systemic world views. I found this book intuitive, but I have already gone through many of its topics in previous studies. I'd still recommend it to beginner and expert. We all feel there is a bigger world than that which we can ever possibly sketch - but sketch we must - and this author does a great chop of sketching, really painting the limits of modern, and future (and all possible thought) in the process.

Boundaries Are Most Interesting

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first let me say that this is the least opinionated book I've read. It merges philosophy and scientific thinking wonderfully. It is pretty clear to see his opinion on quantum physics though.

it's a little opinionated but eye opening

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This book was peppered with fascinating ideas & interesting viewpoints, but too often got bogged down in details of the science involved. this was probably a personal thing, as I am a graduate in physics that's learned (and thought deeply about) quantum mechanics, relativity, & thermodynamics so the explanations behind these wasn't compelling to me. Some of the history presented about them was, though. I also thought the ending was fantastic, brilliantly synthesizing previous ideas into deep thoughts & insights about science, the nature of reality, & consciousness.

Great destination, wasn't into the journey

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An amazing and comprehensive use of title/theme in a historic survey. It is hardy a casual listen. I will probably either read it and/or certainly listen again sometime.

Daunting!

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The book itself was fascinating and thought-provoking, and I can't wait to check out more of Glesier's work. A lot here for science and philosophy nerds alike. But unfortunately the monotone of the narrator caused my mind to drift at times, and I would have to back-track over and over. I typically love male narrators with British accents, but the complete lack of modulation left me.... zzzzz.....

Excellent content, boring narrator

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One of those books that can affirm all your intuitions about life without having to do years of study to gain and get lost, along the way, in specific study. An epic overview of the history of science/knowledge which builds like a blockbuster and an open ended finally.

Fantastic narration and flow to the audio which, I’m sure, ads to the authority of the authors words.

Consciousness Altering

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Opens your eyes to the relationship between science and humanity. Very inspiring, recommend science skeptics to read this!

A must read!!

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Largely this is yet another brief history of physical science. At this, it better than some, but far from the best in that genre. The book also talks about the The Limits of Science which is where I found it quite disheartening. This author is far from alone in seeing limits to scientific knowledge.

The author says, "All we see are projections on the cave wall. Plato dreamt of a cave with an exit to the light of perfect knowledge, but it seems wise to accept that no knowledge can be perfect or final." Wise? It seems to me it would be wise to try to break our chains, turn around, and see reality. The author seems to believe that our chains are somehow unbreakable.

"We don't know how to obtain a deterministic description of the quantum world. These unknowns are not simply a reflection of our current state of ignorance or of our limited tools of exploration. They express Nature's very essence," This may be true, but there is absolutely zero evidence this is the case (See Bell's comments on de Broglie–Bohm theory). Without evidence Einstein did not believe this c&@p and neither do I.

The author claims all measurements have fundamental limits. This is a misunderstanding of the process of measurement. All measurements have three phases. Counting things, comparing counts, mapping to units. Sometimes these counts are off, but this is due to environmental interference/detector inefficiency etc. The fundamental limits of measurements only appear when attempting to map counts to multiple, overlapping, continuum (like position AND momentum).

Imagine learning the rules of chess only by watching games. At first you would have many wrong theories of the rules, but after watching many games, you would have good theories for most of the rules, but some rules that come up very rarely (pawn becoming knight or 50 moves causing stalemate) would be big surprises. Nevertheless your theories would approach the actual rules and eventually your theories would completely model the actual rules (but you could never be certain there is not another rule for which you have never seen an example). During this process you may feel you have a small island of knowledge in a sea of unknown, but with finite rules, this is a passing phase. Certainly if you only get to see a small part of the board, and if the rules seem more complex than chess, you might be on this small island of knowledge for quite some time, but even then, it will be a passing phase. The author seems to think that it would be better to never learn all the rules, instead desiring the pleasure of always learning.

Notice this simple chess example has many features we see in quantum theory. If you can't see the whole board, some local situations may seem to have random outcomes, because they depend of the strategy involving every piece (include those out of your view = non-locality). If a queen can take two different pawns you will be unable to predict which pawn will be taken unless you know all the rules, the strategy, and the position of every piece ( superposition of states),. This is not spooky. Basically this is what de Broglie–Bohm theory proposes. This author very briefly discusses, and discards, de Broglie–Bohm theory without discussing why John Bell felt it was critical physicists understand it deeply. Bell did not think de Broglie–Bohm theory is a good theory (it is not) it is just very important theory in understanding the nature of the limits of our knowledge.

The author states that experiments have "discovered" that randomness is an inherent aspect of nature. This is simply not true. It has been found that if causality is inherent then non-locality is also inherent. Randomness might be inherent (Bohr), or apparent randomness may result from our lack of knowledge of non-local effects (Bohm).

The author says "To me, the real downer is to presume that there is an end to the search and that we will eventually get there." I disagree. I want to learn all the rules as quickly as possible, then begin playing the actual game. Never learning all the rules would be the real downer (and desiring this option seems a bit crazy to me).

There are indeed fundamental limitations upon observer knowledge in our universe. This is not because the unknown is infinite, but because observers have fundamentally limited resources (bits) in comparison with the vastness of the unknown (bits). Nevertheless, even with our limited bits, it may be possible to come to understand the incorrect assumptions we have been making, discard them, and eventually understand the underlying equation describing our universe. Science will not end when we learn all the rules. We are currently doing pre-release Science, Real Science 1.0 can't begin until we know the rules of the universe, only then will real science begin.

I lost count of the number of time the author insisted his Island of Knowledge was not a downer, not giving up, not defeat, not throwing in the towel, not surrender. Perhaps not.

There is a VERY short PDF with four images that are mildly useful in understanding the Wheeler Delayed Choice Experiment described late in the book. It does not really help unless you already understand the subtle experiment. To do that check out delayed choice quantum erasers on Wikipedia before you get to chapter 25.

Downer Physics

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Got a little deep at times but it's very rich with detailed content. Thoroughly enjoyed the historical detail.

Deep and Rich

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