Showing titles in Philosophy

By calling everything into doubt, Descartes laid the foundations of modern philosophy. With the celebrated words "I think therefore I am," his compelling argument swept aside ancient and medieval traditions. He deduced that human beings consist of minds and bodies; that these are totally distinct "substances"; that God exists and that He ensures we can trust the evidence of our senses.

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.

For fans of Wild and Lab Girl, Heartbreak is a uniquely immersive audiobook, merging science and self-discovery to change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love. Narrated by the author and accompanied by in-the-moment diary recordings and interviews, Heartbreak is an immersive audiobook that taps into one of the most shared experiences in the animal kingdom: heartbreak.

En près de cinq heures, cet audio retrace l'histoire de France de 1715 à 1815, incarnée par Olivier Coquard, spécialiste d'histoire moderne.

Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called "modern myths." But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did.  

History is not a prerogative of the human species, Edward O. Wilson declares in Half-Earth, a brave work that becomes a radical redefinition of human history. Demonstrating that we blindly ignore the histories of millions of other species, Wilson warns of a point of no return that is imminent.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by accomplished voice actor Ben Arogundade who is known for his voice work in Doctor Who and Horizons. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by William Bynum and the cover design is by Damien Hirst. The Origin of Species...

“In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever.”—Angela Duckworth, author of Grit Don’t miss Jamil Zaki’s TED Talk, “We’re experiencing an empathy shortage, but we can fix it together,” online now...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado...

The explanations of transcendent phenomena given by saints, sages, and near-death experiencers—miracles, immortality, heaven, God, and transcendent awareness—are fully congruent with scientific discoveries in the fields of relativity, quantum physics, medicine, M-theory, neuroscience, and quantum biology. The Physics of God describes the intersections of science and religion with colorful, easy-to-understand metaphors, making abstruse subjects within both science and religion easily accessible to the layman—no math, no dogma. 

El cerebro es un órgano plástico, que puede ser esculpido con la intención y la voluntad como herramientas. Conocer su capacidad para aprender y adaptarse al entorno es descubrir aquello que nos construye desde fuera. Pero, paradójicamente, es esa misma plasticidad neuronal la que nos brinda la oportunidad de transformarnos desde dentro.

Do doctors really know what they are talking about when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when our own politicians don't? In this landmark book, Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength - and the greatest reason we can trust it.

Of the codified laws of nature, only one inscribes a direction to time: the dreaded second law of thermodynamics, which declares that the disorder of a closed system tends to increase as time passes. New shoes eventually scuff, our bodies weaken and die. Yet our senses tell us that miraculous order constantly emerges, too: children grow and learn; spontaneous patterns manifest in murmurations of starlings. Can it be true that the laws of our universe mandate only dissolution?

Knowledge is a big subject, says Stuart Firestein, but ignorance is a bigger one. And it is ignorance - not knowledge - that is the true engine of science. Most of us have a false impression of science as a surefire, deliberate, step-by-step method for finding things out and getting things done. In fact, says Firestein, more often than not, science is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, and there may not be a cat in the room.

"Eagleman renders the secrets of the brain’s adaptability into a truly compelling page-turner.” —Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner “Livewired reads wonderfully like what a book would be if it were written by Oliver Sacks and William Gibson, sitting on Carl Sagan’s front lawn...

In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies - far from the out-of-control nightmare depicted in science fiction - have the power to improve human and animal health, increase our intelligence, enhance our memory, and even extend our life span. 

Extreme heat, fires, floods, and storms are transforming our planet. Yet we get increasing emissions, divisive politics, and ersatz solutions that offer more of the same: more capitalism, more complexity, more "progress." The impasse we face is not only political and institutional, but cognitive, existential, and narrative. We're incapable of grasping the scale, speed, and impact of global warming. And we optimistically cling to a narrative that promises a better tomorrow if we just keep doing what we're doing.

Leading-edge empirical observations are increasingly difficult to reconcile with "scientific" materialism, with analytic idealism—the notion that reality, while equally amenable to scientific inquiry, is fundamentally mental—a leading contender to replace it. In this book, the broad body of empirical evidence and reasoning in favor of analytic idealism is reviewed in an accessible manner. The resulting argument anticipates a historically imminent transition to a scientific worldview that regards mind, not matter, as the ground of all reality.

A daring new vision of quantum theory from one of the leading minds of contemporary physics Quantum physics is the golden child of modern science. It is the basis of our understanding of atoms, radiation, and so much else, from elementary particles and basic forces to the behavior of materials...

“In this marvelously accessible book, philosopher-Christian Jim Stump provides the reader with new eyes for a journey through time, the origin of the soul, suffering, and morality, and reveals how the latest scientific findings about what it means to be human have led him to a deeper and more...