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    The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science
    Unavailable
    The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science
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    The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

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    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Brilliant and fascinating. No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting." -Bill Bryson

    A captivating journey to the outer reaches of human knowledge

    Ever since the dawn of civilization we have been driven by a desire to know. But are there limits to human knowledge? Are some things beyond the predictive powers of science and the capacities of the human brain? Or are those challenges the next big discovery waiting to happen?

    In The Great Unknown, one of the world's most brilliant mathematicians takes us into the minds of science's greatest innovators as he probes the many mysteries we have yet to solve. From the very large to the very small, from the distant future to the deep past, from the complexities of the human brain to the infinities of mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to join him on a journey to the seven frontiers of knowledge, the outer edges where scientists are actively grappling with the unknown. Can we locate consciousness in the brain? What is dark energy made of? Can we speak of time before the Big Bang? Is it possible to predict the future?

    At once exhilarating and mind bending, The Great Unknown will challenge you to think in new ways about every aspect of the known world. Du Sautoy reminds us that major breakthroughs were often ridiculed at the time of their discovery and invites us to consider big questions-about who we are and the nature of God-that even the most creative scientists have yet to answer definitively.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 11, 2017
    ISBN9781524751920
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for The Great Unknown

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    • 4/5
      If you've missed your share of popular science books on physics, cosmology, mathematics, and neuroscience during the last two decades, then this book can be a not-so-bad starting point. The author has a very down to earth style, and manages to be engaging at the same time. His objective is clear: are there aspects of live, universe, and everything that are in principle unknowable? Are there hard limits to science? The question is simple to ask, yet finding out definitive answers is not so easy. But by setting such a clear motivation, the reader is gently led towards the state-of-the-art in scientific knowledge. Along the way, the author shares nice conversations with scientists who not only know about their respective fields, but had been pioneers who had also spent time thinking about deeper questions. Some of them, such as John Polkinghorne, might surprise you about their perspective on physics and religion. Unfortunately, no matter how engaging it generally is, the book fails to provide much depth on any of the topics it examines. In other words, if you already know about that topic then you'll be bored, and if the topic is totally new for you, then you'll be left scratching your head because of so many missing details. But if, in that case, the book manages to motivate you to dig a little deeper, your reward can be satisfying, but only after further reading. And that reading does not have to heavily technical, for example, whereas this book talks about dark matter and dark energy only superficially, "Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe" by Lisa Randall will be able to give you a much better picture (while still avoiding 'scary' mathematical formulae).You might also like seeing a mathematics professor from Oxford struggling with interpretations of quantum physics, and trying to deal with the fuzzy nature of neuroscience research. The physical world is indeed messy, only approximately modeled, always waiting to surprise us, and still leaves a lot of things in the dark. But maybe, just like the author, you will get a deep satisfaction from our unstoppable appetite for scientific search and discovery.Last but not the least, even if you had your fair share of popular science books, you might still learn a thing or two from this book regarding the edges and limits of mathematics, physics, and consciousness.
    • 5/5
      du Sautoy gives us a lot to think about difficult questions, which he presents entertainingly and at the same time with unique clarity. (Just one example, a question Hawking does not explain: how entropy increases during the expansion of the universe from the - presumably - highly disordered state at the moment of the ‚big bang‘ and how entropy is intimately related to the concept of time, p.286; he also gives the clearest description of Einsteins special theory of relativity I know of) It is well worth to take time to study his arguments and thoughts - and to go back and over them again to clarify one’s thoughts - if you are at all curious about the physical world we are living in and the mental world we construct from our sense-impressions. (X-17)