Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing

Author : Leszek Kolakowski
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465010385
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? written by Leszek Kolakowski and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-11-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we have free will? How can we know anything? What is justice? Why is there evil in the world? What is the source of truth? Is it possible for God not to exist? Can we really believe what we see? These are some of the questions that have intrigued the world's greatest thinkers over the ages. They are questions that make us think about the way we live, work, relate to each other, and see the world. In elegant and accessible prose, the eminent philosopher Leszek Kolakowski explores the essence of these ideas and their ongoing relevance as he introduces us to the great figures of Western thought: from Socrates to St. Augustine, Descartes to Nietzsche, and beyond. Reflecting on the great issues that animate our lives—good and evil, truth and beauty, faith and the soul, free will and consciousness—Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? offers a guided tour of Western philosophy by one of the world's greatest living experts.

Author : Jim Holt
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0871404095
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why Does the World Exist written by Jim Holt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-07-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.

Author : Lawrence M. Krauss
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451624476
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Universe from Nothing written by Lawrence M. Krauss and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author and acclaimed physicist Lawrence Krauss offers a paradigm-shifting view of how everything that exists came to be in the first place. “Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing?” One of the few prominent scientists today to have crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss describes the staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories that demonstrate not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing. With a new preface about the significance of the discovery of the Higgs particle, A Universe from Nothing uses Krauss’s characteristic wry humor and wonderfully clear explanations to take us back to the beginning of the beginning, presenting the most recent evidence for how our universe evolved—and the implications for how it’s going to end. Provocative, challenging, and delightfully readable, this is a game-changing look at the most basic underpinning of existence and a powerful antidote to outmoded philosophical, religious, and scientific thinking.

Author : Tyron Goldschmidt
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136249222
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Puzzle of Existence written by Tyron Goldschmidt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume investigates the most fundamental question of all: Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is explored from diverse and radical perspectives: religious, naturalistic, platonistic and skeptical. Does science answer the question? Or does theology? Does everything need an explanation? Or can there be brute, inexplicable facts? Could there have been nothing whatsoever? Or is there any being that could not have failed to exist? Is the question meaningful after all? The volume advances cutting-edge debates in metaphysics, philosophy of cosmology and philosophy of religion, and will intrigue and challenge readers interested in any of these subjects.

Author : Bede Rundle
Publisher : Clarendon Press
ISBN 13 : 019153367X
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why there is Something rather than Nothing written by Bede Rundle and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2004-02-05 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why should there be anything at all? Why, in particular, should a material world exist? Bede Rundle advances clear, non-technical answers to these perplexing questions. If, as the theist maintains, God is a being who cannot but exist, his existence explains why there is something rather than nothing. However, this can also be explained on the basis of a weaker claim. Not that there is some particular being that has to be, but simply that there has to be something or other. Rundle proffers arguments for thinking that that is indeed how the question is to be put to rest. Traditionally, the existence of the physical universe is held to depend on God, but the theist faces a major difficulty in making clear how a being outside space and time, as God is customarily conceived to be, could stand in an intelligible relation to the world, whether as its creator or as the author of events within it. Rundle argues that a creator of physical reality is not required, since there is no alternative to its existence. There has to be something, and a physical universe is the only real possibility. He supports this claim by eliminating rival contenders; he dismisses the supernatural, and argues that, while other forms of being, notably the abstract and the mental, are not reducible to the physical, they presuppose its existence. The question whether ultimate explanations can ever be given is forever in the background, and the book concludes with an investigation of this issue and of the possibility that the universe could have existed for an infinite time. Other topics discussed include causality, space, verifiability, essence, existence, necessity, spirit, fine tuning, and laws of Nature. Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing offers an explanation of fundamental facts of existence in purely philosophical terms, without appeal either to theology or cosmology. It will provoke and intrigue anyone who wonders about these questions.

Author : John F. Wippel
Publisher : CUA Press
ISBN 13 : 0813218632
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ultimate Why Question written by John F. Wippel and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers studies by prominent scholars and philosophers about the question how have major figures from the history of philosophy, and some contemporary philosophers, addressed "the ultimate why question": why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

Author : John Leslie
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0470673559
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Mystery of Existence written by John Leslie and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling study of the origins of all that exists, including explanations of the entire material world, traces the responses of philosophers and scientists to the most elemental and haunting question of all: why is anything here—or anything anywhere? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why not nothing? It includes the thoughts of dozens of luminaries from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas and Leibniz to modern thinkers such as physicists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, philosophers Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit, philosophers of religion Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, and the Dalai Lama. The first accessible volume to cover a wide range of possible reasons for the existence of all reality, from over 50 renowned thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, and the Dalai Lama Features insights by scientists, philosophers, and theologians Includes informative and helpful editorial introductions to each section Provides a wealth of suggestions for further reading and research Presents material that is both comprehensive and comprehensible

Author : Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 9780791444177
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ages of the World written by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schelling's never completed "masterpiece", translated here with an introduction covering Schelling's life, other works, and a brief analysis of The Ages of the World by Wirth (philosophy, Ogelthorpe U.), explores the question of time as the relationship between poetry and philosophy. Contemporary philosophers herald this work as a predecessor to the modern debates about post-modernity and the limits of dialectical thinking.

Author : Janet Broughton
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691117324
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Descartes's Method of Doubt written by Janet Broughton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 'Descartes's Method of Doubt', Broughton analyses Descartes's novel way of raising radical doubt and argues that he thought he could use doubt to achieve certainty by uncovering the conditions that make radical doubt possible.

Author : Simon Prosser
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198748949
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Experiencing Time written by Simon Prosser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our engagement with time is a ubiquitous feature of our lives, but how does our encounter with it reveal the true nature of temporal reality? Simon Prosser addresses central questions at the heart of this debate, and explores our understanding of time, its passage, and our experience of changes, rates, and durations.