What we cannot know : from consciousness to the cosmos

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quantropy
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Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:38 am

What we cannot know : from consciousness to the cosmos

Postby quantropy » Sat Jun 23, 2018 6:03 am

Why I looked at this book
A book titled What we cannot know seems like it ought to be an informative and entertaining read, telling of where science is going and what its limits are. I would also hope for an introduction to the philosophy of what we can and can't know. Normally I'd be a bit suspicious of a book with such a title though, feeling that it might end up being disappointingly shallow, but I'm hoping that with Marcus du Sautoy's name onit, this book will be better than that. I'll have to see.

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User avatar
quantropy
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:38 am

Re: What we cannot know : from consciousness to the cosmos

Postby quantropy » Mon Jun 25, 2018 5:50 am

Looking for this book on Amazon gets rather confusing. The book I've got is called What We Cannot Know: From Consciousness to the Cosmos, the Cutting Edge of Science Explained, but it also seems to have the title What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge. I read the Kindle sample for the latter on Amazon UK, although this doesn't seem to be available on Amazon.com. Then there's The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science which appears to be the same book, but with different chapter titles.

The book starts off with all the achievements of sciences, but asks whether science will ever hit an impassible barrier. (If it did I'd question whether it should be called science - maybe the book will discuss this later) It also asks whether you can equate God with the Unknowable whilst avoiding the 'God of the Gaps' problem.

I did wonder whether du Sautoy was just the editor of articles written by others, but it looks like he wrote the whole book, getting advice from experts. This is good as in the former case I'd worry that the authors' might not put enough effort into their parts.

The layout of the book is a bit different to normal, what look like chapters at first site are called Edges, each being about 60 pages long. These are then divided into more standard chapters. The first Edge is about chance. Is the toss of a die unknowable? Only a small part of this Edge is in the sample, and so far it's been on the history of probability rather than any mysterious stuff, but it is very readable, so I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.


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