The Big Picture: on the origins of life, meaning and the universe itself.
Oneworld. 2016
In this ambitious work, Carroll covers an enormous range: fundamental physics, cosmology, epistemology, complexity, consciousness, morality.
He shows how (our best current understanding of) fundamental physics allows no room for any ghosts in the machine. He explains the philosophical position of “poetic naturalism”, and how it can be used to tell (well-founded, scientific) “stories” about the emergent macro-world that don’t need to reduce everything to quantum physics, but how this necessarily means we have to omit certain aspects when telling these stories. And he introduces Bayesian reason as a technique for improving understanding at all levels.
This is a bold endeavour, cramming much profound material into 50 chapters, each less than 10 pages, but adding up to over 400 pages of fascinating material. He has interesting insights on a wide range of topics, not just his own speciality of quantum physics, but also epistemology, emergence, complexity, and more. It is a deeply humanistic account, yet grounded in the cold hard light of the constraints of physical reality.
Highly recommended.
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