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    What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
    Unavailable
    What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
    Unavailable
    What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
    Audiobook15 hours

    What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge

    Written by Marcus du Sautoy

    Narrated by Marcus du Sautoy

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Britain’s most famous mathematician takes us to the edge of knowledge to show us what we cannot know.

    Is the universe infinite?

    Do we know what happened before the Big Bang?

    Where is human consciousness located in the brain?

    And are there more undiscovered particles out there, beyond the Higgs boson?

    In the modern world, science is king: weekly headlines proclaim the latest scientific breakthroughs and numerous mathematical problems, once indecipherable, have now been solved. But are there limits to what we can discover about our physical universe?

    In this very personal journey to the edges of knowledge, Marcus du Sautoy investigates how leading experts in fields from quantum physics and cosmology, to sensory perception and neuroscience, have articulated the current lie of the land. In doing so, he travels to the very boundaries of understanding, questioning contradictory stories and consulting cutting edge data.

    Is it possible that we will one day know everything? Or are there fields of research that will always lie beyond the bounds of human comprehension? And if so, how do we cope with living in a universe where there are things that will forever transcend our understanding?

    In What We Cannot Know, Marcus du Sautoy leads us on a thought-provoking expedition to the furthest reaches of modern science. Prepare to be taken to the edge of knowledge to find out if there’s anything we truly cannot know.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateMay 19, 2016
    ISBN9780008141080
    Unavailable
    What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
    Author

    Marcus du Sautoy

    Marcus du Sautoy has been named by the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists, has written extensively for the Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and has appeared on Radio 4 on numerous occasions. In 2008 he was appointed to Oxford University’s prestigious professorship as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins.

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    Reviews for What We Cannot Know

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    • 5/5
      du Sautoy gives us a lot to think about difficult questions, which he presents entertainingly and at the same time with unique clarity. (Just one example, a question Hawking does not explain: how entropy increases during the expansion of the universe from the - presumably - highly disordered state at the moment of the ‚big bang‘ and how entropy is intimately related to the concept of time, p.286; he also gives the clearest description of Einsteins special theory of relativity I know of) It is well worth to take time to study his arguments and thoughts - and to go back and over them again to clarify one’s thoughts - if you are at all curious about the physical world we are living in and the mental world we construct from our sense-impressions. (X-17)
    • 4/5
      If you've missed your share of popular science books on physics, cosmology, mathematics, and neuroscience during the last two decades, then this book can be a not-so-bad starting point. The author has a very down to earth style, and manages to be engaging at the same time. His objective is clear: are there aspects of live, universe, and everything that are in principle unknowable? Are there hard limits to science? The question is simple to ask, yet finding out definitive answers is not so easy. But by setting such a clear motivation, the reader is gently led towards the state-of-the-art in scientific knowledge. Along the way, the author shares nice conversations with scientists who not only know about their respective fields, but had been pioneers who had also spent time thinking about deeper questions. Some of them, such as John Polkinghorne, might surprise you about their perspective on physics and religion. Unfortunately, no matter how engaging it generally is, the book fails to provide much depth on any of the topics it examines. In other words, if you already know about that topic then you'll be bored, and if the topic is totally new for you, then you'll be left scratching your head because of so many missing details. But if, in that case, the book manages to motivate you to dig a little deeper, your reward can be satisfying, but only after further reading. And that reading does not have to heavily technical, for example, whereas this book talks about dark matter and dark energy only superficially, "Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe" by Lisa Randall will be able to give you a much better picture (while still avoiding 'scary' mathematical formulae).You might also like seeing a mathematics professor from Oxford struggling with interpretations of quantum physics, and trying to deal with the fuzzy nature of neuroscience research. The physical world is indeed messy, only approximately modeled, always waiting to surprise us, and still leaves a lot of things in the dark. But maybe, just like the author, you will get a deep satisfaction from our unstoppable appetite for scientific search and discovery.Last but not the least, even if you had your fair share of popular science books, you might still learn a thing or two from this book regarding the edges and limits of mathematics, physics, and consciousness.