
The Island of Knowledge
The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning
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Narrated by:
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William Neenan
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By:
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Marcelo Gleiser
About this listen
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.People who viewed this also viewed...
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- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Since Copernicus, humanity has increasingly seen itself as adrift, an insignificant speck within a large, cold universe. Brazilian physicist, astronomer, and winner of the 2019 Templeton Prize Marcelo Gleiser argues that we’re using the wrong paradigm to relate to the universe and our position in it. In this deeply researched and beautifully rendered book, he calls for us to embrace a new life-centric perspective, one which recognizes just how rare and precious life is and why it should be our mission to preserve and nurture it.
-
-
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By: Marcelo Gleiser
-
The Copernicus Complex
- Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities
- By: Caleb Scharf
- Narrated by: Caleb Scharf
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth rotates around the Sun. Having demoted Earth from its unique position in the cosmos to one of mediocrity, Copernicus set in motion a revolution in scientific thought. This perspective has influenced our thinking for centuries. However, recent evidence challenges the Copernican Principle, hinting that we do in fact live in a special place, at a special time, as the product of a chain of unlikely events.
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- By Gary on 09-24-14
By: Caleb Scharf
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- By: Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson
- Narrated by: Perry Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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.
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Good book.
- By Daniel L Mercer on 08-01-24
By: Adam Frank, and others
-
Now
- The Physics of Time - and the Ephemeral Moment That Einstein Could Not Explain
- By: Richard A. Muller
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You are reading the word now right now. But what does that mean? What makes the ephemeral moment "now" so special? Its enigmatic character has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. Einstein showed that the flow of time is affected by both velocity and gravity, yet he despaired at his failure to explain the meaning of now. Equally puzzling: Why does time flow? Some physicists have given up trying to understand and call the flow of time an illusion.
-
-
Physics mixed with spiritual claptrap!
- By Effe Oake on 04-03-17
-
The Anarchy
- The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
- By: William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
-
-
excellent book but awkward narration
- By TexasVC on 02-25-20
-
Notes on Complexity
- By: Neil Theise
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms—from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems—life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, is in fact a seamless living whole and what our place, as conscious beings, is within it.
-
-
Only the first couple chapters are about complexity
- By washington on 09-21-23
By: Neil Theise
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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Boundaries Are Most Interesting
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it's a little opinionated but eye opening
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Great destination, wasn't into the journey
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Daunting!
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Excellent content, boring narrator
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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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A must read!!
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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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Deep and Rich
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