Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story

Name: Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story
Price: 3.4 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780871404091

ISBN-10: 0871404095

ISBN-13: 9780871404091

Edition: 2012

Authors: Jim Holt

List price: $27.95

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Description:

“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…

Book details

List price: $27.95
Copyright year: 2012
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date: 7/16/2012
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Size: 7.00" wide x 10.00" long x 1.25" tall
Weight: 1.298
Language: English



Prologue: A Quick Proof That There Must Be Something Rather Than Nothing, for Modern People Who Lead Busy Lives



Confronting the Mystery


Interlude: Could Our World Have Been Created by a Hacker?



Philosophical Tour d'Horizon


Interlude: The Arithmetic of Nothingness



A Brief History of Nothing



The Great Rejectionist



Finite or Infinite?


Interlude: Night Thoughts at the Cafï¿½ de Flore



The Inductive Theist of North Oxford


Interlude: The Supreme Brute Fact



The Magus of the Multiverse


Interlude: The End of Explanation



The Ultimate Free Lunch?


Interlude: Nausea



Waiting for the Final Theory


Interlude: A Word on Many Worlds



Platonic Reflections


Interlude: It from Bit



"The Ethical Requiredness of There Being Something"


Interlude: An Hegelian in Paris



The Last Word from All Souls


Epistolary Interlude: The Proof



The World as a Bit of Light Verse



The Self: Do I Really Exist?



Return to Nothingness


Epilogue: Over the Seine


Acknowledgments


Notes


Index