The Big Picture

出版者:Dutton

作者:Sean Carroll

页数:480

出版时间:2016-5-10

价格:USD 28.00

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780525954828

作者简介

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on fundamental issues in quantum mechanics, gravitation, statistical mechanics, and cosmology. He has wide-ranging interests, including in philosophy, complexity theory, and information.

Carroll is an active science communicator, and has been blogging regularly since 2004. His textbook "Spacetime and Geometry" has been adopted by a number of universities for their graduate courses in general relativity. He is a frequent public speaker, and has appeared on TV shows such as The Colbert Report and Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. He has produced a set of lectures for The Teaching Company on dark matter and dark energy, and another on the nature of time. He has served as a science consultant for films such as Thor and TRON: Legacy, as well as for TV shows such as Fringe and Bones.

His 2010 popular book, "From Eternity to Here," explained the arrow of time and connected it with the origin of our universe. "The Particle at the End of the Universe," about the Large Hadron Collider and the quest to discover the Higgs boson, was released November 2012. "The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself" will appear in May 2016.

More information at http://preposterousuniverse.com/

目录信息

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
· · · · · · (收起)

读后感

刘慈欣在他的小说《排险者》中，提出了一个判断文明是否开始对宇宙大统一理论探寻产生兴趣的标准：当这个文明的第一个个体开始仰望星空时。可以武断地说，每一个人心中都向往着大图景，渴望对于世界的本质性规律得到理解；然而，“正确”、严谨地谈论“大图景”而并非流于空谈...  

刘慈欣在他的小说《排险者》中，提出了一个判断文明是否开始对宇宙大统一理论探寻产生兴趣的标准：当这个文明的第一个个体开始仰望星空时。可以武断地说，每一个人心中都向往着大图景，渴望对于世界的本质性规律得到理解；然而，“正确”、严谨地谈论“大图景”而并非流于空谈...  

〖树评〗 《读家教练：生命意义的涌现与演化》 人性，美感，诗意， 智慧本在文字之外。 生命，智能，演化， 嵌入多维数网络中， 联结量变引起质变。 叠加，溶解，漩涡， 时间知觉情感重构， 意群融贯熵增复杂， 新陈代谢破茧化蝶。 变焦，回顾，展望， 自由意志记忆剧本， 弥散...

刘慈欣在他的小说《排险者》中，提出了一个判断文明是否开始对宇宙大统一理论探寻产生兴趣的标准：当这个文明的第一个个体开始仰望星空时。可以武断地说，每一个人心中都向往着大图景，渴望对于世界的本质性规律得到理解；然而，“正确”、严谨地谈论“大图景”而并非流于空谈...  

肖恩·卡罗尔，真是深得我心。 我很久之前，就想过，对人进行量子层面的复制，所带来的同一性困境，结果他在这本书里居然也提到了，而且嵌入在一个“大图景”中，带着我进入了更广阔的境地。 在统一场论和“我该如何生活”之间，有着漫长的距离，两者常常看起来毫不相关，尽管...  

用户评价

哈 也到我来当第一个阅读新鲜出炉的好书的时候了

可以给5星的物理学科普读物。用laws of nature来讲universe, life (of origins), morality, religion, human beings, logic, philosophy。量子力学解释的很通俗易懂，对sci-fi常常提到的many-world和multi-universe做了区分。由于偶个人现在没心思看和religion, morality and philosophy的部分，就没给5星。还有，要注意的就是书里讲的理论，只是（因为无法证明的）众多理论中作者支持的一个。

A really challenging reading, not only for the language issues, but mostly for the various scientific and philosophical phenomena that the author attempts to elaborate..., intrigued and still being humbled by the big world.

一本加州理工學院物理學家寫的哲學/倫理學的書，可能會是一本非常重要的書。越來越感覺，現代哲學就是物理學、腦神經學+邏輯學。（對我一個高一就物理課結業的文科生來說，有點難） 書中的哲學觀叫「詩意自然主義」。郝景芳最近在開智大會上那篇演講是對其近乎完美的詮釋。（清華物理和加州理工物理的握手）也許，這只是尚未被稀釋給大眾吸收的常識？ 書以引用加繆做結尾。存在主義本身倡導詩意，是「詩意自然主義」粗糲的前身，加繆也顯得更有勇氣。

我今年读过的最好的书