This is Sean Carroll's most ambitious book yet: how the deep laws of nature connect to our everyday lives. He has taken us From Eternity to Here and to The Particle at the End of the Universe. Now forThe Big Picture. This is a book that will stand on the shelf alongside the great humanist thinkers from Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan to Daniel Dennett and E.O. Wilson. It is a new synthesis of science and the biggest questions humans ask about life, death, and where we are in the cosmos.Keep in mind that this is a guy who believes in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics, where your every fantasy is really being played out in some parallel universe.
Readers learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level; the emergence of causes from underlying laws; and ultimately how human values relate to scientific reality. This tour of, well, everything explains the principles that have guided the scientific revolution from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe, but it also shows how an avalanche of discoveries over the past few hundred years has changed the world for us and what we think really matters. As Carroll eloquently demonstrates, our lives are dwarfed by the immensity of the universe and redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning.
Update: Publication delayed until May 10, 2016.
Carroll is a piece of interesting work.
ReplyDeleteHe detests and mocks religion because it isn't scientific and then goes on about providing evidence showing how it isn't based on evidence as its basis.
ok.
Carroll then goes on about how beautiful the many worlds interpretation is with flowery poetic language and how there needs to be a new kind of 'science' that isn't hobbled by such quaint concepts as falsifiability and actual evidence (you can't falsify it, much like 'climate change' there is no evidence that could falsify the statement.
ummm.....
So Carroll believes a lack of observational evidence as evidence there is no grounds for God or faith, while at the same time his own personal belief system based on faith, beautiful math, and no observational evidence gets a complete pass on any kind of similar scrutiny. So much for reason.
Carroll is a sanctimonious hypocrite and a snob. He is a true believer who merely wants his own religion as the only truth and to banish all others. He also wishes for science to become a political power that can coerce people into doing and believing things.