TY  - BOOK
AU  - Lightman,Alan P.
TI  - Probable impossibilities: musings on beginnings and endings 
SN  - 0593081323
PY  - 2022///
CY  - New York
PB  - VINTAGE
KW  - Cosmology
KW  - Metaphysics
KW  - Philosophy of mind
KW  - Physics
KW  - Philosophy
KW  - Essays
KW  - lcgft
N1  - 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
N2  - "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"--
ER  -