existential physics a scientist's guide to life's biggest questions

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Julian Baggini said that the book is an 'informed and entertaining guide to what science can and cannot tell us' and that while Hossenfelder may be 'too opinionated' at points, the reader 'will quickly forgive her' since trying to combine the 'concerns of the human world and the baffling complexities of physics' has given her the right to be so. An epilogue is included that concludes with the question 'Is the universe made for us' and a discussion of the anthropic principle and how physics observations might bias our understanding of life's existence. Chapter five attempts to tackle the many-worlds interpretation and whether science can even address the subject. Several chapters, including four, six, and nine, revolve around the issue of free will and what exactly consciousness is, also including reductionism and determinism.

The third chapter examines the second law of thermodynamics, time, and entropy in the concept of why we get older instead of younger.

The second chapter discusses how the universe started and what the end result will entail, serving as an overall breakdown of the history of cosmology. This notice also includes statements that some spiritual beliefs work with our current understanding of physics and are unaffected by such research, with some few actually supporting our collective knowledge on the subject. The book begins with a preface that contains a mental health warning due to the content challenging personal beliefs of readers, with Hossenfelder describing herself as an 'agnostic heathen'. The chapters are interspersed with four interviews with scientists in various physics fields, who offer their own perspective and 'stereotypes of eccentricity' to the subject matter. These questions are split into individual chapters and interviews with various scientists are included throughout the book.Įach chapter of the book tackles a different scientific or 'ascientific' topic, moving between philosophical scientific subjects including predictability, the meaning of life, and the existence of free will to those Hossenfelder considers impossible to be answered by science, such as the existence of god, the multiverse, and the 'belief that subatomic particles are conscious'. It focuses on discussing various existential and ethical questions related to scientific topics and explaining their connection to current scientific research or debunking their relevance or possibility to ever be explained by science in the first place. Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions is a nonfiction popular science book by theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder that was published by Viking Press on August 9, 2022.

Existential physics a scientist's guide to life's biggest questions