(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best cosmology books

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

The claim that "time is exactly like space" is not true. Time is treated as a dimension in Special Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR), but it is very different from the "usual" spatial dimensions. (It boils down to "distance" along the time direction being negative, but that statement doesn't really mean anything out of context.) The central idea of relativity is that while the entire four dimensional "thing" (spacetime) just is (is invariant), different observers will have different ideas about which way the time direction points; it turns out to be convenient for our description of nature to respect the natural "democratic" equivalence of all hypothetical observers.

I can point you to a couple of good resources:

This
is a very good, book about SR, and some "other stuff". It's pretty mathematical, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't totally comfortable with college level intro physics and calculus.

This
is the "standard" text for undergraduate SR; it's less demanding than the above, but uses mathematical language that won't translate immediately if you go on to study GR. (I have not read this myself.)

This is the book that I learned from; I thought it was pretty good.

This is Brian Greene's famous popularization of String Theory. It has chapters in the beginning on SR and Quantum Mechanics that I think are quite good.

This is Einstein's own popularization, only algebra required. All the examples that others use to explain SR pretty much come from here, and sometimes it's good to go right to the source.

This is a collection of the most important works leading up to and including relativity, from Galileo to Einstein, in case you'd like to take a look at the original paper (translated). The SR paper requires more of a conceptual physical background than a mathematical one; the same can't be said of the included GR paper.

I don't know what your background is--the first three options above are textbooks, and that's probably much more than you were hoping to get into. The last three are not; the book by Brian Greene and the collection (edited by Stephen Hawking) are interesting for other reasons besides relativity as well. For SR, though, another book by Greene might be a bit better: this.

The Physics AS/A Levels are a funny lot of modules; I believe they're designed to be doable without any A Level-equivalent Maths knowledge, so they're riddled with weird explanations that really try to avoid maths - which often just makes everything harder in the long run. (I did AQA Physics A, but all were pretty similar as far as I gathered.)

With that in mind, if you're looking to study Physics further on, I'd recommend supplementing your mathematics. If you're doing Further Maths, you probably needn't bother, as the first year of any university course will bore you to death repeating everything you learnt about calculus etc.; if you're doing single Maths, I'd recommend getting confident with C1-4, and maybe purchasing the Edexcel (Keith Pledger) FP1/FP2 books to get slightly ahead before uni. They're great books, so might be useful to have for Y1 of uni and reference thereafter regardless. I was quite put off by the attitude towards Y1 maths of the Further Maths people (about half the cohort), who kept moaning about having done it all already, so found focusing in lectures a tad harder; I wish I'd bothered to read just a little ahead.

The second thing I'd recommend would be reading fairly broadly in physics to understand what aspect in particular you enjoy the most. In my experience, the students who have even a rough idea of what they want to do in the future perform better, as they have motivation behind certain modules and know how to prioritise for a particular goal, e.g. summer placement at a company which will look for good laboratory work, or even as far as field of research.

To that end (and beginning to answer the post!), books that aren't overly pop-science, like Feynman's Six Easy Pieces/Six Not-so-Easy Pieces are good (being a selection of lectures from The Feynman Lectures). Marcus Chown does a similarly good job of not dumbing things down too much in Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and We Need to Talk About Kelvin, and he talks about a good variety of physical phenomena, which you can look up online if they interest you. I could recommend more, but it really depends how you want to expand your physics knowledge!

E - darn, just read you're not in the UK. Oops. Mostly still applies.

> That was one of the best wall of texts I've read since I joined this site.

I'm glad you think so!

> One being the simplest question, what is a fallibilists take on life (how we got here, why we are here, etc.)?

Fallibilism shows us that life is the survival of genetic knowledge. The only requirements for life are energy, matter, and evidence. These three things let it encode information, so life can occur anywhere and in any form as long as these three things are present.

As far as the purpose of life goes, fallibilism shows that purpose, like value, is entirely subjective. If you find meaning in having a purpose, you can easily give yourself one.

> My second question is who are some philosophers I could read up on regarding fallibilism?

I suggest reading up on Karl Popper (free PDF). and David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity.

> My final question is almost unrelated, but I just began teaching myself piano, do you have any tips that will further my skill?

Haha, just follow the problem-solving method... Be your own worst critic, be picky when identifying problems with your skills, practice only when you're energized to try new things (instead of a strict schedule), and have fun! Play what you want to play.

I'm working on a theory of music (for any instrument, not just piano) that can help explain how I understand music, and it's still somewhat difficult for me to explain it in clear terms, but I'll give it a shot. To summarize, I break down music into its "harmonic", "rhythmic", and "dynamic" aspects. The harmonic aspect has to do with relative pitch, or "intervals" that sound good. The rhythmic aspect has to do with the relative timing of sounds that sound good. The dynamic aspect has to do with the relative "weight", or "emphasis" between sounds that sound good.

Fallibilism shows us that there is an objective truth, even in aesthetics. Since it would take us an infinite amount of time and resources to discover absolute truth, we must settle for discovering objective truths through the indefinite growth of knowledge instead.

All the spiritual new age stuff I've been paying attention to about arcturian/pleiadian channeled messages are about 5th dimensional consciousness currently. In other texts dimensions up to I think 12-13 were documented and experienced through DMT-meditative states.

The oneness kundalini awakening experiences I think may be 5th dimensional vibrational channel. Where perception is at the understanding that we are a collective consciousness (flow state morphogenic field) tapped and tuned into each other ex. Helicopter pilot/athlete share each other's skills downloading information from each other via quantum non-local entanglement (energy doesn't know distance/time) although linear physical plane experience seems so separate and linear our consciousness itself is multidimensional and we enter/activate that bio-neurocircuitry, accessed/activated through the heart magnetic field which in new age terms "higher mind" is used widely. Holistic perception of unconscious-subconscious-and higher mind. Research done by Heart Math institute called Global Coherence shows that we of course vibrate along with the humans resonance and are effected by geoelectromagnetic storms, 2012 was the age of Aquarius (heart consciousness awareness I guess, from what I observe.)
And solar radiation has been increasing, transmuting DNA, our "junk" DNA 64 codons which about only 22? Are active at a time. This whole 2012 theme is of Ascension. Transmuting naturally physiologically-spiritually rather than technology which takes over biology. So basically I see transhumanism as a more left brain imbalanced head polarity consciousness route in fear of death, it doesn't know the pineal gland-right brain side of it, I see it as we're transcending into the light body, (check out Tibetan rainbow body documentary). Yogis could perceive entities/auras same as other mystics/native Americans because of shamanic ritual, alchemical, practiced etc. activating 12 DNA strands.

Related excerpt from Mike Hockney God series book:
Imagine a domain of dialectical Platonic Forms (i.e. forms that are initially imperfect but are capable of evolving towards perfection), associated with every conceivable human activity such as flying a helicopter, driving a car, performing high level mathematics, sculpting, falling in love, composing a hip hop song, making a movie - you name it, every base is covered.

Now imagine that each of these Forms is an Aristotelian entelechy. It actively wants to perfect itself, to reach its omega point where its individual dialectical progression reaches its end. These Forms are teleological. They have a purpose, and a will to fulfil that purpose.

Each of these Universal Forms exists in the r = 0 domain outside space and time, but they are all connected to the r > 0 domain of particulars. Each Universal Form and its set of associated particulars constitute a system of Sheldrakian morphic resonance. So, for example, all helicopter pilots in the world are particulars of the Universal Form for piloting a helicopter. As a pilot learns to fly, he is in effect tapping into the Universal Form, and the better he gets the more he is a personal crystallisation of that Form. Each helicopter pilot (each "particular") feeds back to the Universal Form, and the Universal feeds back to them in a continuous, synergic feedback loop. So, any new trick learned by one pilot will be communicated back to the Universal Form and this will then update all the other pilots, who will all learn the new trick much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case (just as new generations of Sheldrake's rats get better at making their way through a maze, even if they have had absolutely no contact with any of the previous generation of rats that learned how best to negotiate the maze).

In other words, any activity you wish to undertake, no matter what (unless you are a groundbreaking genius), already exists as a dialectical Platonic Form available to your unconscious mind. You just need to tune into it like a radio station, pick up the signal and start channelling it. If you let your unconscious mind deal with it rather than your conscious mind (which always gets in the way), you will be able to master virtually any skill. Of course, getting your conscious mind "out of the way" is extraordinarily difficult."

Oh man you want to really know what's the purpose and design of humanity? Look up Dan Winter, a goldmine of synthesized formation about the purpose of DNA, our holofractal quantum reality,

The ancients such as KHEMET, Lemuria, Atlantis, were all more bicameral mind, balanced brain hemispheres, (combine advance sympathetic physics resonance technology, crystal technology) in a more collective state.
If you do not understand the collective unconscious look up Carl Jung & Rupert Sheldrake on Morphic Resonance. Carl Jung on synchronicity as well.
Here's a good website related:
Recommend reading synchronicity here:


http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_consciousuniverse22.htm#1_-_The_Basics


http://www.starstuffs.com/physcon/freqamp.html



http://ascensionglossary.com/index.php/Crystal_Caverns

• Gaia's-Earth brain - also collective consciousness connection
  
  Related to 6th dimensions:
  Mike Hockney book:
  https://www.amazon.com/Illuminatis-Dimensional-Universe-Illuminati-Book-ebook/dp/B00519T3EO
  
  
  
  Other related:
  
  http://divine-cosmos.net/making-the-shift.htm
  
  http://www.lovehaswon.org/ascension-spirituality/message-for-the-1st-wave-ascension-crew-the-centrifuge
  
  http://in5d.com/energy-update-mega-diamond-razor-frequencies-cutting-through-the-veils/
  
  https://channelingthemasters.org/2016/11/23/walking-in-your-empowerment/
  
  https://thenewdivinehumanity.com/2016/11/25/when-your-subconscious-shifts-you-shift-dimensions/
  
  
  Earth matrix grid chakras:
  https://quantumstones.com/ley-lines-key-unlocking-matrix/

>methodically state the case for why creation is most likely and/or why evolution is unlikely.

You will find lots and lots of the latter. Very little of the former.

>I'd also be happy to read GOOD anti-creation books as well, provided they meet the above criterion of not being mocking.

Those would just be science books based on the academic literature, wouldn't they?

Here is my reading list form the past few months. These would be pro-evolution (a.k.a science). Creationism is mentioned in a few of them, but almost in passing because Creationism is simply not a factor in legitimate scientific research, so it gets pretty much no consideration.

Knock yourself out. ;)

• Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin - Also, watch the three part series that aired on PBS hosted by Neil Shubin.
  
  
• Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll - An in depth look into developmental evolution.
  
  
• The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin
  
  
• The Link by Colin Tudge and Josh Young
  
  
• Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade
  
  
• Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA by Daniel J. Fairbanks - This and the other Fairbanks book listed below are the only books on this list with the intent to refute what creationists contend. He does this not by presenting the creationist argument and then trying to refute. He does it by simply presenting the evidence that science has born out regarding human evolution and genetics.
  
  
• The Story of Earth by Robert Hazen - this is a cool book about the history of the Earth and life and how geology and biology worked in tandem with other factors to produce life from the point of view of a protein biologist.
  
  
• Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth by Richard Fortey - Good general overview of evolutionary and geologic history.
  
  
• The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity by Edwin Douglas - This is the most academic book in this list and, as such, is the most difficult to read. It is a concise look at what we know about the Cambrian Explosion from the scientific literature.
  
  
• Life's Ratchet by Peter Hoffmann - Very good book about how the chaos wrought inside cells by thermal motion at the molecular level leads to the ordered functioning of the machinery of life.
  
  
• What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology by Addy Pross - Super interesting take on the question, "What is Life?" He comes to a very interesting conclusion which might have implications for abiogenesis research.
  
  
• The Machinery of Life by David S. Goodsell - A neat little book that gets you acquainted with what it's really like inside of cells. A good companion book to read with Life's Ratchet as they highlight different aspects of the same topic.
  
  
• Evolving by Daniel J. Fairbanks
  
  
• Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Paabo - Very interesting book about the drama, blood, sweat and tears, Dr. Paabo shed to develop the techniques to sequence ancient DNA. You simply won't find books like this and Your Inner Fish above amongst Creationist literature because they simply don't do what these scientists do out in the field and in the lab.

>By pairing translations of Gorgias and Rhetoric, along with an outstanding introductory essay, Joe Sachs demonstrates Aristotle's response to Plato. If in the Gorgias Plato probes the question of what is problematic in rhetoric, in Rhetoric, Aristotle continues the thread by looking at what makes rhetoric useful. By juxtaposing the two texts, an interesting conversation is illuminated one which students of philosophy and rhetoric will find key in their analytical pursuits.

>Joe Sachs taught for thirty years at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. He has translated Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics and On the Soul and, for the Focus Philosophical Library, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Poetics as well as Plato's Theaetetus.

Joe Sachs has arguably done more to reinvigorate and make accessible the works of Aristotle than anyone else in the last decade. He has done this by eliminating a lot of the 'kruft' that has accumulated through the Latin -> Christian -> English tradition that has enveloped many of Aristotle's surviving works.

I have read his version of the 'Metaphysics' and Sach's elimination of many of the latinate words helps to both clarify, and possibly confuse, the texts because he uses unidiomatic english equivalents such as "coming-into-being-staying-itself" to try and catch the broad range of the original Greek. This can be formidable, but I think the effort is worthwhile because it forces you to think through the text, and also because his translations make Aristotle far more lively and engaging than most other common translations (e.g. the Library of Liberal Arts edition of the Nicomachean Ethics is impenetrable in its tedium and terse prose - I want to consult Sach's edition and actually try to get through it).

If you are unfamiliar both with Joe Sachs and Focus Philosophical Library they appear to the best source for classical Greek texts. The Focus editions, along with the Agora Series from Cornell University Press (a 'Straussian project', but certainly an admirable one), are the two best translation imprints I am currently aware of.

I am Greekless, but I have it on several authorities who have mastered Greek and used Sach's translations for many of their courses.

Honourable mention should also go to Green Lion Press which has a lot of cool titles from the history of science - Apollonious, Euclid, Faraday - along with two of Sach's translations of Aristotle.

I was introduced to this concept by the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which has a whole chapter about Everett Ruess and briefly discusses a few other esthetes like John Muir and Henry David Thoreau. Here's an excerpt from the book and a quote from Ruess:



>"What Everett Ruess was after was beauty, and he conceived beauty in pretty romantic terms. We might be inclined to laugh at the extravagance of his beauty-worship if there were not something almost magnificent in his single-minded dedication to it. Esthetics as a parlor affectation is ludicrous and sometimes a little obscene; as a way of life it sometimes attains dignity."


---


>"The beauty of this country is becoming part of me. I feel more detached from life and somehow gentler. . . . I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly."



You might want to start by looking into the Aesthetic Movement, which has a lot of parallels to the earlier Romantic Movement. Also read any biographies or writings by the esthetes I listed above (and others) for an insight into their personal philosophies and revelations from following that lifestyle.



I'm currently reading the book A Beautiful Question by Frank Wilczek. While it doesn't necessarily go into what you're looking for, it attempts to explain the science of beauty, bridging science and arts. Super interesting read that I think you would enjoy!

I see. For years I thought something like this. Then I listened to
http://www.amazon.com/The-Story-Earth-Billion-Stardust/dp/0143123645
Robert M. Hazen declares self replication is inevitable. It may have occurred several times on Earth.

Nature does not need. Natural selection does not have a purpose. The organism which is slightly different from the original but replicates faster will create more copies.

Eventually organisms exist which are so good at extracting from the environment to replicate that it seems to be a miracle. But it was natural selection which did it.

Nature does not have goals. If it did, and intelligent life were a goal, then all but a few species on Earth are dead ends. Intelligence did not evolve in those species.

Twenty per cent of the human blood supply goes to the brain. It is a heavy cost. We also throw objects and expect to hit things. That takes split second timing. Many brain cells are needed for this. If a large brain is needed for hunting then natural selection will produce it.

Tree dwelling apes moved to the ground for food. The brain got no bigger. Natural selection meant the ones who moved better on the ground survived and replicated. Feet and hands became specialized.
Birds do not have hands. Smart birds will go through multiple steps to obtain food. They will manipulate objects to get the food. But without hands its a dead end.

Having hands meant many things. Food could be shared easily. Tools could be made. Using rocks became a way of life. Shaping rocks became a way of life. The extra brain cells when they occurred were essential for throwing well, and helped develop strategies for survival.

During the development of hominids the Earth has been in an ice age cycle. Changing climates meant changing survival strategies repeatedly. Adaptability became paramount.

Stephen King's The Tommyknockers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tommyknockers has an intersteller species preying repeatedly on new worlds. The most frightening concept in the book is that there is no reason for it. It happens.

My favorite short textbook on cosmology, which I might re-read, is:

​

Introduction to Cosmology by Barbara Ryden

>...It is aimed primarily at advanced undergraduate students in physics and astronomy, but is also useful as a supplementary text at higher levels. It explains modern cosmological concepts, such as dark energy, in the context of the Big Bang theory. Its clear, lucid writing style, with a wealth of useful everyday analogies, makes it exceptionally engaging. Emphasis is placed on the links between theoretical concepts of cosmology and the observable properties of the universe, building deeper physical insights in the reader...

​

Many people already know this one. It's quite light in math (in terms of proofs and derivations). Useful for those who want a sense of cosmology before taking a full graduate course on cosmology and/or relativity.

Do I ever!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Universe-Rearview-Mirror-Symmetries/dp/0525953663/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

As for your more substantive question, part of the solution is to address some of these issues in school both by addressing more interesting topics (there is simply no reason why physics needs to be presented in the order in which it was discovered, or to teach high school physics as though everyone taking it is going to be an engineer).

But even so, the fact remains that we have a large number of people (and especially political leaders) who are not only scientifically illiterate, but are proudly so. A small role can be played by popularizers, but to be effective, they need to not only be clear, but honest. I think there's far too much focus on people writing about crazy off-the-wall theories in order to get pagehits or incredulous response. What we know about the universe is plenty interesting.

Popularizers should present those.

> I mean I've been an atheist for a long time but it didn't occur to me until recently what the absence of a higher power entail. ... Everything we hold dear only has any meaning because we tell ourselves it has.

I don't see how having "a higher power" would solve this. Suppose God existed, and said that "the purpose of life is to figure out how many asteroids there are in the asteroid belt." Even if we knew this, most people would think "well that sounds like a waste of time." It's not clear how having a higher power telling you what to do would solve this. And even if God were to tell us "the meaning of life", a natural follow up question would be, "Okay. And how is that meaningful?"

You asked for some literature on the subject, so here are some things that come to mind if you're interested in reading more on it:

Thomas Nagel's The Absurd

Susan Wolf's Meaning in Life and Why It Matters

Thaddeus Metz's Meaning in Life

Additionally, Thaddeus Metz has also written the SEP article on the meaning of life, so that may be a good place to start.

EDIT: Fixed formatting.

Yes, exactly. I love reading articles and essays but try anything longer than that without a story and I just am unable to read it. On that note: the last non-fiction I read had an amazing story. Wrinkles in Time by Nobel Prize winning physicist George Smoot

The Tzimisce Teacher:

​

Carl Sagan warned of a world of scientific ignorance where illogical superstitions like the anti-vaccine movement and religious tribalism increasingly took hold.

​

John Allen Paulos warned of a world of mathematical illiteracy where pyramid schemes and predatory lotteries increasingly took hold, reflected perhaps even in the popularity of the non-mathematical D&D5e and v5 VTM tabletop games.

​

In an increasingly hostile environment for the Kindred, where through the ages, not only a secretive cabal of academic vampire mages attack the clan, but a zealot-led Second Inquisition and a beckoning spell to remove former leaders, the Tzimisce have to be more intelligent and clever than the huge population of psychotic, self-serving, technologically-adjacent humans to preserve the clan's secret affairs, and excel mentally beyond the ranks of the enemy clans and factions in order to ensure survival.

​

In countries across the world, the populace are encouraged through effective emotional manipulation to become mindless, passive consumers, docile, disposable workers, and uninformed citizens, an inclination infecting even the most vaunted of intelligentsia, so while a prospective candidate member for the clan (even among the revenant families) may be admired for certain strengths of personality and courage or a unique perspective or fetishistic abberance, such individuals still remain the product of successive centuries of refulgent anti-intellectualism, and as such, must be taught or destroyed if not able to meet the challenges of membership.

​

To this end, The Tzimisce teacher dedicates their unlife to a calling of judgement. The teacher pays visits to members of the clan one can find with auspex through the world (a personal specialty from the teacher's experience), and tests them and corrects holes in their understanding of the kindred or the world or political ensnarement. If the Kindred is receptive and willing to improve and shows reasonable progress they are allowed to live, and if they are intellectually stagnant, recalcitrant, or umasterful to a degree beyond redemption, then they are executed, along with any sires or packmates or regional Sabbat leaders that attempt to stop this from happening.

​

There are some Tzimisce that completely remove themselves from the reach of other clans through adapting their bodies to hostile environments far beneath the Earth, within the oceans, or even outer space (to still contend with other supernatural creatures), but for those that remain at risk among the humans, The Teacher has culled a huge number (perhaps thousands or tens of thousands) of unacceptable clan-mates. The Teacher has not been previously spoken of much through clan histories because many fail to live to tell of meeting The Teacher.

How many times have pictures of these books made a showing in /atheism. We get it, they're a pretty good read. We all hypocritically revere and jerk off to them like theists do to the bible. How about reading a textbook on mathematical principles, Principles of Physics, or Astronomy. You want your mind blown? Read anything related to infinity.

Some great thinkers were staunchly religious. Try Symbolic Logic and the Game of Logic. Computer science at it's basics.

God is not Great, page 6:
"Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any image or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man's most useful innovations: the bound book)."

I don't know about the greatest, but here are a few I've found enlightening:

• For tearing down bad reasoning, Matt Dillahunty.
  
• For showing the beauty and consistency of the naturalistic worldview, Sean Carroll.
  
• For showing how to have better conversations about religion, Anthony Magnabosco.
  
• For illuminating the Satanic way of life, Anton LaVey and Peter Gilmore.
  
• For Stoicism, William Irvine.
  
• For Zen, Brad Warner.

that book was really great. The book of nothing is awesome too.

http://www.amazon.com/Most-Incomprehensible-Thing-Introduction-Mathematics-ebook/dp/B008JRJ1VK/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/189-1600061-4524700

If general relativity interests you, this book finds a balance between faith-based conceptual understanding which you have referenced in your question and the more advanced, mathematically dense reference books. The book itself was written for self-study for the 'enthusiastic layman' and moves from relatively (pun intended) simple maths to the relevant Newtonian Mechanics, Lorentz Transformations, Tensor Calculus, Schwarzschild Solution, simple black holes etc.

You should read Joe Sachs' translation: https://www.amazon.ca/Aristotles-Metaphysics-Aristotle/dp/1888009039

He provides an explanation about his style and the way he decided to interpret Aristotle. It's in a very fluid style that is meant to be accessible to students in philosophy while at the same time retaining the technical terms. It's a very reputable translation and I used it many times in my courses.

His biggest point is translating ousia by thinghood rather than substance, since the translation to substance was a mistake committed by the Scholastics in the Middle-Ages.

The book in itself is wonderfully edited too. It's big and the margins are wide so you can take notes on the side. He provides a glossary and a summary of each section too.

It's in my opinion way more superior than Penguin or Oxford.

It is funny you mention "now", because it is a concept that Einstein himself had trouble explaining (enough that someone wrote a book about it https://www.amazon.com/Now-Physics-Time-Richard-Muller/dp/0393285235) . It is problematic for that reason: what is "now?" And what is the smallest possible increment of time? Obviously the physical limitations of the brain have a smallest increment, but what is the absolute smallest? Especially when the length of that increment is not consistent throughout all points of the universe, as we have mentioned? It is a very tricky subject.

In all likelihood, what you think of, as a human observer with an electrochemical brain, as "now" is actually the past. Because, as I mentioned, there are limiting factors to how fast your brain can see things, process it, extrapolate into a general sense of "now"

But yes, in theory, what feels like "now" to you are the smallest increments of time you are possible of conceiving of. But time is fluid, from a perceptual standpoint. You don't experience it as perfectly segmented little slices.

You experience time narratively. The big moments in your life - weddings, emotional high and low points - those anchor the narrative, while mundane tasks come and go.

Your sense of "now" is distorted in that way, because your are always retroactively "assembling" the "now", and depending on what's going on, you're not always "assembling" it the same.

The "tiny particles moving back through time" is a bit of a joke - there are theoretical subatomic particles called tachyons that may move faster than the speed of light; and therefore "escape" the dimensional constraints of linear time progression.

But others argue nothing is faster than the speed of light, and thus, nothing can move back in time. They're mentioned in The Watchmen by Allan Moore, but if you haven't seen it, i won't spoil it any further!

I like the concept of the cyclic model proposed by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok. It basically says that space and time exist forever, and the universe undergoes an endless sequence of cycles in which it contracts in a big crunch and re-emerges in an expanding big bang, with trillions of years of evolution in between.

Edit: I'm currently reading their book, it's a good read for anyone interested in this topic.

This book aims to take someone from no math knowledge and get them to GR, it's hit or miss and works best if you are very motivated and use additional study materials. It worked fine as a companion to Hartle or Shutz's more traditional textbooks.

Our library was taking down their wall of laureates and someone snagged Feynman and a few other popular folks (eg. Einstein) right quick.

I've also got Smoot because his Wrinkles In Time is part of what got me interested in physics when I read it as a kid.

I love Carl Sagan's The Demon-haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark

Yes... I recommend this book first. Sagan is like a shakespear of science.

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/1439505284

As you can imagine, this is kind of a deep question, although surprisingly neglected. Some of the simpler responses to this issue are supernatural, ie. God or soul based, and that's one of the basic appeals of world religions, the source of meaning it provides. That's not the only way to find meaning in life, however. Thaddeus Metz's Meaning in Life is a great book on the subject (you can find it online without too much effort.)

I can't help you answer this question, but I just started reading Sean Carrol's From Eternity To Here, which specifically addresses this question. If you want to see what an actual theoretical physicist has to say on this topic when he's got a full book to explain things, I highly recommend that.

Book recommendation: The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself by Sean Carroll. It's really, really, really good and the title speaks for itself. You may find it illuminating

This is probably what you are looking for: http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0767915011

But here is a great FAQ: http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/endlessuniverse/askauthors.html

This theory is compatible with BBT since it allows for a single event 13.8 billion years ago, but it extends much further back in time. I believe the new theory still has holes, but it is much more complete IMHO. But it's also relatively new.

Compare also Richard Muller, Prof Physics, UCBerkeley, author of "Now-Physics of Time" book: I don’t consider string theory to be a true theory. And many string theorists would agree.... Perhaps the search for the mathematics that unites quantum mechanics and general relativity is pointless..

It's a framework with incomplete postulate set, which are mutually inconsistent each other in addition.

It's good to understand, that the problem of reconciliation of extrinsic and intrinsic perspectives of multiparticle emergent system is way more complex and high-dimensional, than it looks from perspective of simplistic low-dimensional theories. It's not just like the attempt for modeling of the richness of our everyday world with two sets of primitive equations - the worse: it's exactly this. The scope of their inconsistency indicates, these two models can be never fully reconciled at the deterministic level.

Alexander's horned sphere fractal is probably the first attempt for deterministic reconciliation of intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives of 2D ring at 3D space. It apparently provides a neverending job for these involved in it.

I'd suggest you read a book called From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll. It's a bit dense and it may take more than one read-through, but it helped me understand a lot. Not enough to try to explain here, but still worth the time!

3.4

>economics is purely made up. Not a reflection of reality

Correct. Economics has mathematical aspects, but they are misused to advance false "theories of human behaviour" rather than deployed to explain reality itself. Economics is voodoo, and has no a priori connection to reality. Physics is also voodoo, except that it uses mathematics to explain aspects of reality -- that's why it has been so "successful" -- because it uses mathematics, even while irrationally dismissing mathematics as unreal (!).

>doing calculations for electrical engineering and circuits

Is that how you got a false 'coherence lock' -- locked into irrational empiricism? Use your reason, not your senses. It's the mathematics (the equations) that's 'real', not the "matter", not the "circuits".

You're in the Matrix. You're trapped in your senses and "observations". Wake up, Neo. Wake up to ontological mathematics. Escape your subjective, fallible, deluded senses. Read the God Series. Book 1

>orthogonal number system

Correct. Imaginary numbers are orthogonal to real numbers.

>it's not all imaginary,

None of it is imaginary: it's a misnomer derived from empiricist, materialist, irrational biases.

"Imaginary numbers" ontologically are what time is made up of. Imaginary space ("time") is orthogonal to real space. We relate to each differently, but mathematically space and time are different aspects of 6-dimensional space with 100% mathematical properties. They are mathematics 'in themselves', numbers 'in themselves'.

The Pythagorean-Leibnizian Illuminati's Six Dimensional Universe

>direction change

In a way, yes. But negative numbers have ontological parity with positive numbers. It's human sensory biases that leads to discrimination against "non-sensory numbers": zero and infinity, imaginary numbers and negative numbers. Consider:

Real positive numbers = space

"Imaginary" positive numbers = imaginary space (time)

Real negative numbers = "anti-real space" i.e. antimatter

Imaginary negative numbers = anti-time

All of the above together = 6-dimensional spacetime domain (dimensional and extended matter)

Zero/alpha-infinity = 0-dimensional frequency domain (dimensionless and unextended mind)

6-dimensional spacetime + 0-dimensional monadic singularity = the universe (100% mathematical)

>formed through experience AND rationalization

Our "life" is experience and rationalisation. For most people, it's mostly sensory experiences with very little coherent a priori rationalisation. Experiences don't help us reach the Truth. Billions of people have had plenty of "experiences" but have been wholly ignorant about noumenal reality. Plainly experience didn't help them.

Rationalisation (reason, logic, and a priori mathematics in accordance with the PSR) is the only way to explain reality in depth. Science became "successful" in creating technology once it adopted mathematics (rationalism).

>physics uses those patterns in math and figures out how they interact in reality

Physics uses mathematics and mathematical formulae to become "successful" and create all kinds of technology, without having the first clue what mathematics is, avoiding all the big questions and any kind of grand vision of reality (that incorporates mind and free will). Isn't that supremely disingenuous and duplicitous?

Physics is a butchered, sensory misinterpretation of mathematical reality. It's success is wholly attributable to its use of the mathematics of reality, and its degree of success is determined by how much it falls in line with the a priori mathematics and the PSR.

>we have figured out so far

Pythagoras, Leibniz, Hegel et al figured out the roots of ontological mathematics and how reality actually operates, and the Mandarins and Ignavi still haven't listened. Isn't that tragic?

>objectivity shares a related root as observe

Observation is entirely subjective (see extract in 3.1). A different species would have entirely different sensory "experiences" and interpret the objective, a priori, noumenal mathematics of reality differently, but the mathematics itself is entirely the same in each case, in all cases, it's the exact same throughout the entire universe. If you're a rationalist, you'll accept this -- if you're irrational, you'll reject objective reason. That's life.

Some good popsci-style but still somewhat theoretical CS books:

• The Emperor's New Mind
  
• The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity
  
• Gödel, Escher & Bach
  
• CODE by Charles Petzold

Cosmology, the branch of astronomy that focuses on the origin of the universe. Her textbook shares the name of an actual textbook I had for an astronomy course last year.

Yes, I do find it disturbing. Anyone who cares about the truth should be.

Carl Sagan wrote a spectacular book on the human tendency to jump to bad conclusions.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Nothing-Vacuums-Origins-Universe/dp/0375726098

this is better

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/1439505284

We Need To Talk About Kelvin...

For atomic physics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(Asimov_book)

For the vacuum of space, https://www.amazon.com/Book-Nothing-Vacuums-Origins-Universe/dp/0375726098

Holy shit. Imma buy it.

No. Things do not "need a reason" to exist. As you have pointed out, the assumption that "everything must have a reason/cause" leads to an infinite regression -- a state of affairs that (to my knowledge) is always rejected by logic.

The solution then comes in two flavors. 1) The universe "just happened" -- the creation of the universe was entirely arbitrary. 2) The universe was caused to come into existence by some entity whose existence is a necessary fact -- this entity couldn't not exist. This necessary entity is what Aristotle called the "uncaused causer". Catholic theologians say that that thing is God.

This is all examined in Aristotle's Metaphysics. I highly recommend you check it out. If you do decide to read it, I suggest you get this translation.


Also, because this is really bothering me, you say that a truly logical universe would be empty. So if you were to have your "empty universe", then in what way would that universe be empty? Is it empty of physical entities? If so, would the universe contain the fact that there are no physical entities? Would it still be the case, within that universe, that 2+2=4?

The trouble with this thinking is that logic has nothing to do with physical entities. Logic deals only with ideas. If you think we get logic from the physical world, then tell me where you last saw a wild √2 running around.

You say that a logical world would be empty "so that there isn't anything to prove" -- why do you think that? Logic doesn't have preferences. Logic is simply a set of rules for attaching ideas together. (To the best of my knowledge) Logic operates entirely on hypotheticals. It says "If you have p, and you have q or r, then you have p and q or r."

Am reading Henrietta Lacks ATM and really liking it.

I also recommend ...

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan

God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens

Risk - Dan Gardner

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer

How We Know What isn't So - Thomas Gilovich

EDIT : MOAR

Quirkology - Prof. Richard Wiseman

Tricks Of The Mind - Derren Brown

59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot - Prof. Richard Wiseman

How to Lie With Statistics - Donald Huff

The physicist David Deutsch has a good essay about this in his latest book
'Beginning of Infinity'

He explains that it's mathematically impossible to design a voting system which is free of bias. Deutsch prefers first past the post, because it makes it easier to get rid of bad governments and it's also less likely to result in a coalition government, which end up making compromises that nobody has voted for.

I completely understand why the liberal democrats are aggrieved at the current voting system, which underrepresents their share of the vote- but since all voting systems are unfair in some way, isn't it better to be unfair to the least popular of the three parties (whichever that may be)?