Philosophy of Physics
A Very Short Introduction
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Philosophy of Physics
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Narrated by:
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Walter Dixon
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By:
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David Wallace
About this listen
Philosophy of Physics is concerned with the deepest theories of modern physics - notably quantum theory, our theories of space, time and symmetry, and thermal physics - and their strange, even bizarre conceptual implications. A deeper understanding of these theories helps both physics, through pointing the way to new theories and new applications, and philosophy, through seeing how our worldview has to change in the light of what we learn from physics.
This Very Short Introduction explores the core topics in philosophy of physics through three key themes. The first - the nature of space, time, and motion - begins by considering the philosophical puzzles that led Isaac Newton to propose the existence of absolute space, and then discusses how those puzzles change - but do not disappear - in the context of the revolutions in our understanding of space and time that came first from special, and then from general, relativity. The second - the emergence of irreversible behavior in statistical mechanics - considers how the microscopic laws of physics can be compatible with the melting of ice, the cooling of coffee, the passing of youth, and all the other ways in which the large-scale world distinguishes past from future. The last section discusses quantum theory - the foundation of most of modern physics, yet mysterious to this day.
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Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow!
- By Michael on 02-02-14
By: Max Tegmark
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Quantum Enigma
- Physics Encounters Consciousness
- By: Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 265
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 227
In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science and the basis of one-third of our economy. They found, to their embarrassment, that with their theory, physics encounters consciousness. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all this in nontechnical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, emphasizing what is and what is not speculation.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Wow. Very Informative and mind boggling.
- By Kevin Harper, Realtor on 08-11-17
By: Bruce Rosenblum, and others
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The Island of Knowledge
- The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning
- By: Marcelo Gleiser
- Narrated by: William Neenan
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 551
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 487
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 485
How much can we know about the world? In this audiobook physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence, the origin of the universe, the nature of reality, and the limits of knowledge. In so doing he reaches a provocative conclusion: Science, like religion, is fundamentally limited as a tool for understanding the world. As science and its philosophical interpretations advance, we face the unsettling recognition of how much we don't know.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Island of knowledge
- By Joshua Kring on 07-26-15
By: Marcelo Gleiser
-
Paradox
- The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 96
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. With elegant explanations that bring the listener inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Almost Useless
- By Michael on 06-19-19
By: Jim Al-Khalili
-
Six Not-So-Easy Pieces
- Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
- By: Richard P. Feynman
- Narrated by: Richard P. Feynman
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 229
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 131
No 20th-century American scientist is better known to a wider spectrum of people than Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), physicist, teacher, author, and cultural icon. His autobiographies and biographies have been read and enjoyed by millions of readers around the world, while his wit and eccentricities have made him the subject of TV specials and even a theatrical film.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Very Interesting, but ...
- By Doug on 01-01-06
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Knocking on Heaven's Door
- How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World
- By: Lisa Randall
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 184
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 156
The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Too Political
- By Allan on 12-14-11
By: Lisa Randall
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Relativity
- The Special and the General Theory
- By: Albert Einstein
- Narrated by: Julian Lopez-Morillas
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 182
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 147
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 145
Albert Einstein described Relativity as a "popular explosion" of his famous theory. Written in 1916, it introduced the lay audience to the remarkable perspective which had overturned theoretical physics. Einstein's genius was to express this perspective in understandable terms.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Can't stand listening to the reader.
- By Xcoder on 04-20-11
By: Albert Einstein
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The Quantum Story
- A History in 40 Moments
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Mike Pollock
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 235
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 174
Utterly beautiful. Profoundly disconcerting. Quantum theory is quite simply the most successful account of the physical universe ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the 21st-century technology that we now take for granted. But at the same time it has completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at its most fundamental level.
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1 out of 5 stars
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who's the target reader?
- By Hannah on 09-17-11
By: Jim Baggott
-
The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,130
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,755
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,726
Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
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5 out of 5 stars
-
ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
-
The Grand Biocentric Design
- How Life Creates Reality
- By: Robert Lanza, Matej Pavšič
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 289
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 243
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 239
What is consciousness? Why are we here? Where did it all come from - the laws of nature, the stars, the universe? Humans have been asking these questions forever, but science hasn't succeeded in providing many answers - until now. In The Grand Biocentric Design, Robert Lanza, one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People", is joined by theoretical physicist Matej Pavšic and astronomer Bob Berman to shed light on the big picture that has long eluded philosophers and scientists alike.
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2 out of 5 stars
-
Should be in the fiction section.
- By Frank on 12-29-20
By: Robert Lanza, and others
-
Infinite Powers
- How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 688
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 564
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 559
Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves. Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes "backwards" sometimes; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Not written to be read aloud
- By A Reader in Maine on 02-21-20
By: Steven Strogatz
-
The Universe in the Rearview Mirror
- How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality
- By: Dave Goldberg
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 58
A physicist speeds across space, time, and everything in between showing that our elegant universe from the Higgs boson to antimatter to the most massive group of galaxies is shaped by hidden symmetries that have driven all our recent discoveries about the universe and all the ones to come. Why is the sky dark at night? Is it possible to build a shrink-ray gun? If there is antimatter, can there be antipeople? Why are past, present, and future our only options? Are time and space like a butterfly's wings? No one but Dave Goldberg, the coolest nerd physicist on the planet, could give a hyper-drive tour of the universe like this one.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Good, but for whom?
- By Michael on 08-31-13
By: Dave Goldberg
-
To Explain the World
- The Discovery of Modern Science
- By: Steven Weinberg
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 261
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 220
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 218
In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries, from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato's Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral school of Chartres and the Royal Society of London. He shows that the scientists of ancient and medieval times not only did not understand what we understand about the world--they did not understand what there is to understand or how to understand it.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
How the world created a Newton
- By Gary on 03-02-15
By: Steven Weinberg
-
Dance of the Photons
- From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation
- By: Anton Zeilinger
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 81
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
Einstein's steadfast refusal to accept certain aspects of quantum theory was rooted in his insistence that physics has to be about reality. Accordingly, he once derided as spooky action at a distance the notion that two elementary particles far removed from each other could nonetheless influence each others propertiesa hypothetical phenomenon his fellow theorist Erwin Schrdinger termed quantum entanglement.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant author tries hard, but comes up short...
- By Michael on 07-27-12
By: Anton Zeilinger
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Track -ta- toose?
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Number theory is the branch of mathematics that is primarily concerned with the counting numbers. Of particular importance are the prime numbers, the "building blocks" of our number system. The subject is an old one, dating back over two millennia to the ancient Greeks, and for many years has been studied for its intrinsic beauty and elegance, not least because several of its challenges are so easy to state that everyone can understand them, and yet no one has ever been able to resolve them. But number theory has also recently become of great practical importance.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Very Limited and One-sided View
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Foucault (2nd Edition)
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In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Gary Gutting presents a wide-ranging but nonsystematic exploration of some highlights of Foucault's life and thought. Beginning with a brief biography to set the social and political stage, he then tackles Foucault's thoughts on literature, in particular the avant-garde scene; his philosophical and historical work; his treatment of knowledge and power in modern society; and his thoughts on sexuality.
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4 out of 5 stars
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VSI # 122
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By: Gary Gutting
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Plato
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This lively and accessible introduction to Plato focuses on the philosophy and argument of his writings, drawing the listener into Plato's way of doing philosophy, and the general themes of his thinking. It looks at Plato as a thinker grappling with philosophical problems in a variety of ways, rather than a philosopher with a fully worked-out system. It includes a brief account of Plato's life and the various interpretations that have been drawn from the sparse remains of information.
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2 out of 5 stars
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No Plato, lots of Feminism
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
If you move at high speed, time slows down, space squashes up, and you get heavier. Travel fast enough and you could weigh as much as a jumbo jet, be flattened thinner than a CD without feeling a thing - and live forever! As for the angles of a triangle, they do not always have to add up to 180 degrees. And then, of course, there are black holes. These are but a few of the extraordinary consequences of Einstein's theory of relativity.
By: Russell Stannard