A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher, explore the great enigmas of the universe---the nature of free will, the strange fabric of the cosmos, the true limits of the mind---and each in their own way, uncovers truth about our place in the universe.
“A remarkable synthesis of the thoughts, ideas, and discoveries of three of the greatest minds that our species has produced.” —John Banville, The Wall Street Journal from Amazon. com
A book like this needed to be written by a humanities/literary person and not a philosopher or a physicist, uniting humanities and science seeking the same understanding of reality.
Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant pushed the assumptions of human reason to their mind-bending conclusions, but emerged with an idea that crowned a towering philosophical system—that the human mind has fundamental limits, and those limits undergird both our greatest achievements as well as our missteps.
Through fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around the powerful, haunting fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between reality “out there” and reality as we experience it. Out of this profound truth comes a multitude of galvanizing ideas: the notion of selfhood, free will, and purpose in human life; the roots of morality, aesthetics, and reason; and the origins and nature of the cosmos itself.
As each of these thinkers shows, every one of us has an incomplete picture of the world. But it's only as mortal, finite beings are we able to experience the world in its richness and breathtaking majesty. A soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, The Rigor of Angels movingly demonstrates that the mysteries of our place in the world may always loom over us—not as a threat, but as a reminder of our humble humanity.
Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant and the ultimate nature of reality.
David Hume is given credit for shaking Kant out of his dogmatic slumbers. The joke is that Hume forced us to have to read Kant's difficult prose; otherwise, maybe not. According to Hume, "laws" are just habits. We know anything only thru our senses. This troubled Kant. No wonder. P. XXII
Kant thought, if I understand correctly, that reality is not independent of what we see. We observers create the reality that we see. There is no objective reality "out there." With Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle carrying the supporting quantum load in the 20th Century. Either I do not understand or else I disagree. Does C.S. Lewis have something to say about this? P. XXIII
Paradoxes result which Kant tried to resolve if time and space are inherent in the world. Is Kant talking about Einstein's relativity? Reality only shows up when we observe it. P. XXIII
I do not understand Kant's "paradoxes." P. XXIII
Heisenberg was convinced it made no sense to think of particles having position or momentum prior to observing one or the other. P. XXIII
Heisenberg thought that trajectory only came from observation. P. XXIV
Does this mean that before our species evolved 300,000 years ago particle trajectory did not exist? The emergence of homo sapiens created reality in some sense? Did Heisenberg consider this? The position/momentum conundrum did not exist before we came along since humans were not there to observe. This line of thought (maybe my simple mind does not understand) paradoxes me.
The trials and tribulations of a man who remembered everything. I am not sure what relevance this for the ultimate source of reality. P,. 3
Borges questioned the reality of human language to connect people. P. 8
This is the right book at the right time. P. 10
Electric.
(Six people at Applebees all staring at their cell phones I am so sad) Yet I have no desire to talk to anybody. P. 10
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