Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story - Couverture souple

'There is no more entertaining, sure-footed, and witty guide to the big questions that we must all ponder than Jim Holt. Join him' Daily Beast

'Humorous yet deeply profound' New Scientist

'There's no denying the pleasures to be had from tagging along as Holt soars away into the heavens of our cosmic enigmas ... a wonderful book' -- Daily Express

'An elegant and witty writer...I can imagine few more enjoyable ways of thinking than to read this book -- New York Times Book Review

'What is special about Why Does the World Exist? is that Holt and the experts he talks to apply humour, good sense and a dose of incredulity and wonder to the problem' Independent

'I've [read] Why Does the World Exist by Jim Holt to get my existential buzz.' Bruce Springsteen

'Winding its way to no reassuringly tidy conclusion, this narrative ultimately humanizes the huge metaphysical questions Holt confronts, endowing them with real-life significance. A potent synthesis of philosophy and autobiography. ' Booklist, Starred Review

'The pleasure of this book is watching the match: the staggeringly inventive human mind slamming its fantastic conjectures over the net, the universe coolly returning every serve.... Holt traffics in wonder, a word whose dual meanings - the absence of answers; the experience of awe - strike me as profoundly related. His book is not utilitarian. You can t profit from it, at least not in the narrow sense ... And yet it does what real science writing should: It helps us feel the fullness of the problem.' New York Magazine

'A guided tour of ideas, theories and arguments about the origins of the universe.... Through discussions with philosophers of religion and science, humanists, biologists, string theorists, as well as research into the scholarship of days past - from Heidegger, Parmenides, Pythagoras and others - and an interview with John Updike, Holt provides a master's-level course on the theories and their detractors. The interludes find the author positioning himself as an existential gumshoe, but also working through the sudden loss of a pet and, later, the death of his mother. Holt may not answer the question of his title, but his book deepens the appreciation of the mystery.' Kirkus Reviews

'[Jim Holt] leaves us with the question Stephen Hawking once asked but couldn't answer, 'Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing?'' Slate

'It s the mystery William James called 'the darkest in all philosophy': '[W]hy is there something rather than nothing?' For Jim Holt, it is a question that may never find an answer, but one endlessly worth asking. In this highly engaging book, Holt visits great thinkers in mathematics, quantum physics, artificial intelligence, theology, philosophy, and literature. These conversations don t lead him toward any conclusion, but they make for a lively, thoughtful read.' Boston Globe

'A reminder that the quest for foundational truths is not only a supremely human activity but also one that brings us, if not absolute truth (which may be unknowable), at least better and better approximations of the truth ... A gifted essayist and critic ... Holt intersperses his intellectual investigation with brief but revealing glimpses of his own life, including the death of his mother, when existential musings on the nature of being seem anything but abstract.' --The American Scholar

'[Holt] is a spirited interlocutor and a deft explainer, patiently making sense of subjects ranging from Platonism to quantum mechanics, while nonetheless marvelling at their seemingly fantastical nature ... This cheerful persistence - combined with anecdotes celebrating the thrills of travel, good food, and drink - helps to sweeten what is, finally, a sombre vision, in which reality may take the form of 'infinite mediocrity' and 'the life of the universe, like each of our lives, may be a mere interlude between two nothings.' New Yorker

'A portrait gallery of leading modern philosophers ... Their answers give us vivid glimpses of the speakers ... Holt's philosophers belong to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ... When and why did philosophy lose its bite? How did it become a toothless relic of past glories? These are the ugly questions that Jim Holt's book compels us to ask.' --New York Review of Books

'There s no denying the pleasures to be had from tagging along as Holt soars away into the heavens of our cosmic enigmas ... a wonderful book' --Daily Express

'Why is there a world rather than nothing at all?' remains the most curious and most enduring of all metaphysical mysteries. Moving away from the narrower paths of Christopher Hitchens, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, the celebrated essayist Jim Holt now enters this fascinating debate with his broad, lively and deeply informed narrative that traces all our efforts to grasp the origins of the universe.With sly humour and a highly original personal approach Holt takes on the role of cosmological detective. Suggesting that we might have been too narrow in limiting our suspects to God and the Big Bang, he tracks down, among others, an eccentric Oxford philosopher, a Nobel Laureate physicist, a French Buddhist monk, and John Updike just before he died, to pursue this cosmic puzzle from every angle. As he pieces together a solution - while offering useful insights into time, consciousness, and eternity - he sheds fascinating new light on the meaning of existence.