Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

Probable impossibilities : musings on beginnings and endings / Alan Lightman.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York : VINTAGE, 2022.Edition: First Vintage Books editionDescription: 197 pages ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0593081323
  • 9780593081327
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Probable impossibilities -- Between nothingness and infinity -- What came before the big bang? -- On nothingness -- Atoms -- Modern Prometheus -- One hundred billion -- Smile -- The anatomy of attention -- Immortality -- The ghost house of my childhood -- In defense of disorder -- Miracles -- Our lonely home in nature -- Is life special? -- Cosmic biocentrism -- The man who knows infinity.
Summary: "Before the discovery of quarks, we hadn't imagined anything smaller than protons and neutrons. Are quarks the end of the line, the smallest imaginable objects in nature? Can the universe be divided into infinitely smaller units in the same way the universe is ever-expanding? Alan Lightman explores these questions in his characteristic accessible and lyrical prose, considering the igniting element behind consciousness, the origin of life, the anatomy of a smile, our fickle memories. Probable Impossibilities brings together recently published and four original essays. Throughout, Lightman guides a discussion on what we know of the universe, life, the mind, and the conception of things vastly larger than ourselves in time and space"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 523.1 L724 Available 33111010821631
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way" ( Wall Street Journal ) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities--and impossibilities--of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between.

Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity ? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab?

Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called "the poet laureate of science writers," explores these questions and more--from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang.

Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.

Includes bibliographical references.

Probable impossibilities -- Between nothingness and infinity -- What came before the big bang? -- On nothingness -- Atoms -- Modern Prometheus -- One hundred billion -- Smile -- The anatomy of attention -- Immortality -- The ghost house of my childhood -- In defense of disorder -- Miracles -- Our lonely home in nature -- Is life special? -- Cosmic biocentrism -- The man who knows infinity.

"Before the discovery of quarks, we hadn't imagined anything smaller than protons and neutrons. Are quarks the end of the line, the smallest imaginable objects in nature? Can the universe be divided into infinitely smaller units in the same way the universe is ever-expanding? Alan Lightman explores these questions in his characteristic accessible and lyrical prose, considering the igniting element behind consciousness, the origin of life, the anatomy of a smile, our fickle memories. Probable Impossibilities brings together recently published and four original essays. Throughout, Lightman guides a discussion on what we know of the universe, life, the mind, and the conception of things vastly larger than ourselves in time and space"-- Provided by publisher.

Powered by Koha