Author: James Porter Mills
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Get Book

Book Description

Author: Frank Martela, PhD
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062942794
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description
In a series of essays that explore the notion of what brings significance to our existences, clarifying why we have this longing beyond the present moment and an insatiable dissatisfaction with where we are, scholar Frank Martela tackles the subject of finding meaning in life. With beautiful decorative elements and an engaging design, the book approaches its subject in a readily digestible form. It grapples with some of life’s most pressing questions, like "Is happiness a worthy goal?" and "What is the foundation for meaning in a secular society?" and "Is life an existential void?" yet Martela answers these questions and more in a relaxed, conversational tone and with a wry sense of humor, placing some of life’s greatest philosophical concerns and quandaries into a modern-day context. Martela quickly and concisely gets to the heart of the matter: your place in the world and how to find meaning in life as countless thinkers and philosophers have done before, yet the emphasis here is on what we do with the life we have and how we can make it more meaningful. Part prescriptive and part armchair philosophy book, A Wonderful Life is accessible to everyone, from the well-read scholar to the apprentice as well as anyone curious about how to extract the greatest meaning and sense of purpose from their existence.

Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 087140480X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham.

Author: Fred C. Adams
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439138206
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
In Origins of Existence astrophysicist Fred Adams takes a radically different approach from the long tradition of biologists and spiritual leaders who have tried to explain how the universe supports the development of life. He argues that life followed naturally from the laws of physics -- which were established as the universe burst into existence at the big bang. Those elegant laws drove the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets -- including some like our Earth. That chain of creation produced all the tiny chemical structures and vast celestial landscapes required for life. Ultimately, physical laws and the complexity they generate define the kind of biospheres that are possible -- from an Amazon rain forest to a frigid ocean beneath an ice sheet on a Jovian moon. Adams suggests that life was not merely some lucky break, but rather a natural outcome of the ascending ladder of complexity supported by our universe. Since our galaxy seems to harbor millions of planets with the same basic elements of habitability as Earth, the emergence of life is probably not a rare event. If life emerges deep inside planets and moons, as new research suggests happened on our planet, the number of viable habitats is truly enormous. Seven chronological chapters take the reader from the laws of physics and birth of the universe to the origins of life on Earth -- showing how energy flowed, exploded, and was repeatedly harnessed in replicating structures and organisms. In his groundbreaking first book, Fred Adams established the five eras of the universe with a focus on its long-term future. It is perhaps not surprising that he now turns his attention to the mystery of our astronomical origins. Here is a stunning new perspective, a book of genesis for our time, revealing how the laws of physics created galaxies, stars, planets, and even life in the universe.

Author: D C Anjaria
Publisher: D C Anjaria
ISBN:
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Get Book

Book Description
Many of us are familiar to some degree with the philosophy of existentialism but regard it as too distant and austere a system of thought. For D. C. Anjaria, however, existentialism is the most sympathetic of the human languages that enable us to share and enjoy together the substance of life. This author's poetry expresses a sensibility that is particularly common to our century: that of a lone soul, restless and yearning for death as the ultimate experience, yet also leaning with nostalgic romanticism toward life and its pleasures, both innocent and guilty. The intractable guilt that has afflicted many of the poets and thinkers of the last several decades is very much a source of the inspiration for D. C. Anjaria's work. Unlike many contemporary poets, however, Anjaria perceives a living God, albeit one who always seems engaged with the author in an agon of classical dimensions. It is when the heavens shake That their dead dust falls On the immense nonentity of the universe And, in the same piece: The creation at all, O Creator, Was thy biggest mistake— Suicidal, O God: One of these days Life will kill you. Creation will go beyond you. The thoughtful reader can only be stimulated and invigorated by the mind at work in From Existence to Life.

Author: James Porter Mills
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
ISBN: 3849673413
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book

Book Description
There has been a growing feeling in my mind that "Health" is too small a title with which to introduce a book that sets forth the noblest science that can possibly be formulated. Although health is one of the most desirable conditions in personal life, and one of the most essential, yet it is but one of the ways of Life that are set forth in the book. It appears to me that, "From Existence to Life; the Science of Self-Consciousness" exactly covers the whole field of that which is herein formulated. It is a science for all-round use, health being but one of the many modes of the Principle of All-Knowledge; and, so far as man is concerned, the science of self-consciousness, formulated correctly, and made use of intelligently, should satisfy the mind and comfort the heart in all the emergencies of self-conscious life, enabling a man to "hold on his way and grow stronger and stronger."

Author: Odeh Turjman
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1685633269
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Get Book

Book Description
“Who am I?” “From whence am I?” These perennial questions have plagued mystics, philosophers, theologists and scientists since time immemorial. Mankind is still grappling with the mystery of the self and consciousness. And many have given up and declared, “One cannot know!” This book unravels the mystery of the self and consciousness, and elucidates it in a comprehensive fashion supported by scientific research. An explanation is provided about the state of enlightenment, which mystics have attempted to expound in the absence of modern empirical knowledge. Upon the discovery of one’s real nature, the pressure of living ceases to exist and the conflict within subsides. Disturbing questions regarding love and relationships, behaviour and morality, and the search for enlightenment are investigated and resolved in such a manner to remove the burden they impose. This publication does not propose to change you, rather it questions the concept of self. Who is this ‘you’? It highlights that the focus should be elsewhere and offers a new perspective.

Author: Hans Holzer
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 9780809235773
Category : Future life
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Life Beyond offers intriguing and revealing proof that death is not the final stage but merely a passageway to new lives beyond.

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465024408
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
Biologists have long dismissed mathematics as being unable to meaningfully contribute to our understanding of living beings. Within the past ten years, however, mathematicians have proven that they hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of our world -- and ourselves. In The Mathematics of Life, Ian Stewart provides a fascinating overview of the vital but little-recognized role mathematics has played in pulling back the curtain on the hidden complexities of the natural world -- and how its contribution will be even more vital in the years ahead. In his characteristically clear and entertaining fashion, Stewart explains how mathematicians and biologists have come to work together on some of the most difficult scientific problems that the human race has ever tackled, including the nature and origin of life itself.

Author: Fred Adams
Publisher: Plume
ISBN:
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book

Book Description