Greetings, surface-dwellers! I have finally emerged from the secret underground laboratory where I have been polishing the manuscript for The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. We pushed up the publication date to May 10, so you’ll get it in plenty of time for your summer beach reading. Evidence that it exists, all 145,000 glorious words:
As will happen in the writing process, the organization of the book has changed since I first mentioned it. Here is the final table of contents. As you might gather, I went with an organization of many short chapters. Hopefully that will help give the book the feeling of a light and enjoyable read.
THE BIG PICTURE: ON THE ORIGINS OF LIFE, MEANING, AND THE UNIVERSE ITSELF
0. Prologue
* Part One: Cosmos
- 1. The Fundamental Nature of Reality
- 2. Poetic Naturalism
- 3. The World Moves By Itself
- 4. What Determines What Will Happen Next?
- 5. Reasons Why
- 6. Our Universe
- 7. Time’s Arrow
- 8. Memories and Causes
* Part Two: Understanding
- 9. Learning About the World
- 10. Updating Our Knowledge
- 11. Is It Okay to Doubt Everything?
- 12. Reality Emerges
- 13. What Exists, and What Is Illusion?
- 14. Planets of Belief
- 15. Accepting Uncertainty
- 16. What Can We Know About the Universe Without Looking at It?
- 17. Who Am I?
- 18. Abducting God
* Part Three: Essence
- 19. How Much We Know
- 20. The Quantum Realm
- 21. Interpreting Quantum Mechanics
- 22. The Core Theory
- 23. The Stuff of Which We Are Made
- 24. The Effective Theory of the Everyday World
- 25. Why Does the Universe Exist?
- 26. Body and Soul
- 27. Death Is the End
* Part Four: Complexity
- 28. The Universe in a Cup of Coffee
- 29. Light and Life
- 30. Funneling Energy
- 31. Spontaneous Organization
- 32. The Origin and Purpose of Life
- 33. Evolution’s Bootstraps
- 34. Searching Through the Landscape
- 35. Emergent Purpose
- 36. Are We the Point?
* Part Five: Thinking
- 37. Crawling Into Consciousness
- 38. The Babbling Brain
- 39. What Thinks?
- 40. The Hard Problem
- 41. Zombies and Stories
- 42. Are Photons Conscious?
- 43. What Acts on What?
- 44. Freedom to Choose
* Part Six: Caring
- 45. Three Billion Heartbeats
- 46. What Is and What Ought to Be
- 47. Rules and Consequences
- 48. Constructing Goodness
- 49. Listening to the World
- 50. Existential Therapy
- Appendix: The Equation Underlying You and Me
- Acknowledgments
- Further Reading
- References
- Index
A lot of ground gets covered. In Part One we set the stage, seeing how discoveries in science have revealed a universe that runs under unbreakable, impersonal laws of nature. In Part Two we think about how to conceptualize such a universe: how to learn about it (Bayesian inference, abduction) and how to talk about it (emergence and overlapping theoretical vocabularies). In Part Three we get down and dirty with quantum mechanics, the Core Theory, and effective field theories. In Part Four we start down the road of connecting to our macroscopic world, seeing how complexity and life can arise due to the arrow of time. In Part Five we think about the leading challenge to a physicalist worldview: the existence of consciousness. And in Part Six we recognize that the universe isn’t going to tell us how to behave, and acknowledge that the creation of meaning and purpose is ultimately our job.
Now back to being a scientist with me. I have drafts of four different papers on my computer that need to be kicked out and onto the arxiv!
I wouldn’t worry — the book is currently unavailable, since it hasn’t been published yet. But come May 10, it should be on its way to you.
Where can I pre-book this (I stay in India, so e-book will be ok, although I will prefer to read things on paper and keep them in my treasure trove. I can also arrange to get it shipped from US through a friend). Is there a interested people e-mail database, where I can drop my e-mail, so that I don’t miss the launch ?
From the ToC you seem to have stolen all the questions I had in my mind.
hjupadhyay– You can pre-order from Amazon. And updates will certainly be posted here. You can sign up for email alerts from the sidebar on the right.
Dear Mr. Sean
First of all I congratulate you for your ongoing efforts on the book “The Big Picture of Universe”
I want to give few comments on Table of content.
A)Universe moves by itself
Since beginning of time, the process of universe evolution is not standalone process of materialism but it can happen only due to co-existence of two realities i.e. Materialism & Consciousness. If either of two is absent, Big bang evolution can never happen in time. In absence of consciousness, quantum fluctuations will not be there and materialism of universe will be just like a dead body without eternal soul.
To explain the universe based on materialism only will be just like a presentation of trailer scene of a movie whose sequence is not controlled & managed by an intelligent director. Such an effort will showcase half picture of universe evolution and ignorance of efforts of consciousness.
Physical laws of universe remain dead at or before the beginning of evolution from Symmetry. Then who co-exists there to break the symmetry which results into evolution of four fundamental fields governing the existence of universe.
To explore about conscious reality of human body, you can find Yog Meditator in India who can showcase you experiment about independent existence of eternal soul. Modern science has not learnt the way to explore the existence of consciousness.
B)Why does universe exist?
Two reasons : 1)Universe is a showcase of sequence of efforts manifested by eternal consciousness
2)Universe is meant for facilitating the needs of various species including humans and
movement of eternal souls from one birth to next birth depending on good & bad deeds
C)Death is the end.
Death means end of physical body but soul is eternal and never dies with it. Soul moves from one birth to next birth depending on good & bad deeds
D)Effective theory
Even if fundamental laws of universe is understood reasonably to good accuracy, but life of a human has two aspects…
1)Physical needs to be satisfied by science & technology which follow unbreakable & impersonal laws of nature
2)Behavioral part or code of conduct is driven by free will of eternal consciousness and not bound by any physical laws of nature
Hope your valuable comments
Ajay
Can’t wait for the new book! Any chance that there will be an audiobook version?
There will certainly be an audiobook. Whether or not I’m the one who reads it is currently unknown.
how much do you think one can doubt?
what doubting has to do with physics and equations?
it seems doubting can make you to fail being rational if done too much or just wondering too much about everything.
there should be a usefulness of how you doubt and why that will make sense for what you are searching.
can you explain why einstein doubted newton and came up with his theory of relativity
and how gravity works?
why would one doubt newton, to begin with?
and nobody else did other than einstein?
Since we already know the answer to life the universe and everything is 42, can I assume your book will provide the question?
why dont doubt einstein seriously?
was he wrong or not?
to make a sense of using doubt not doubting absurdly
its not that easy, i assume…
First book I’ve ever pre-ordered