The Meaning of Everything

The Meaning of Everything PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192805768
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
"We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium -- the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it -- and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W.C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project -- a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivaled uber-dictionary. Book jacket."--Jacket.

The Meaning of Everything

The Meaning of Everything PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192805768
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book

Book Description
"We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium -- the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it -- and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W.C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project -- a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivaled uber-dictionary. Book jacket."--Jacket.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? PDF Author: David Bellos
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0865478724
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages—as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the diversity of languages. Without translation there would be no world news, not much of a reading list in any subject at college, no repair manuals for cars or planes; we wouldn't even be able to put together flat-pack furniture. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are. Among many other things, David Bellos asks: What's the difference between translating unprepared natural speech and translating Madame Bovary? How do you translate a joke? What's the difference between a native tongue and a learned one? Can you translate between any pair of languages, or only between some? What really goes on when world leaders speak at the UN? Can machines ever replace human translators, and if not, why? But the biggest question Bellos asks is this: How do we ever really know that we've understood what anybody else says—in our own language or in another? Surprising, witty, and written with great joie de vivre, this book is all about how we comprehend other people and shows us how, ultimately, translation is another name for the human condition.

The Everything Answer Book

The Everything Answer Book PDF Author: Amit Goswami
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing
ISBN: 1612833748
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Goswami’s basic premise is that quantum physics is not only the future of science, but is also the key to understanding consciousness, life, death, God, psychology, and the meaning of life. Quantum physics is an antidote to the moral sterility and mechanistic approach of scientific materialism and is the best and clearest approach to understanding our universe. In short, quantum physics is indeed the theory of everything. Here in 17 chapters, Dr. Goswami and his friends and colleagues discuss, among other things, how quantum physics affects our understanding of: Zen Thoughts, feelings, and intuitions Dreams Karma, death, and reincarnation God’s will, evolution, and purpose The meaning of dreams The spiritualization of economics and business, politics and education, and society itself This fascinating new book will appeal to a wide array of readers, ranging from those interested in the new physics to those captivated by the spiritual implications of the latest scientific breakthroughs.

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life PDF Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139490990
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
If you accept evolutionary theory, can you also believe in God? Are human beings superior to other animals, or is this just a human prejudice? Does Darwin have implications for heated issues like euthanasia and animal rights? Does evolution tell us the purpose of life, or does it imply that life has no ultimate purpose? Does evolution tell us what is morally right and wrong, or does it imply that ultimately 'nothing' is right or wrong? In this fascinating and intriguing book, Steve Stewart-Williams addresses these and other fundamental philosophical questions raised by evolutionary theory and the exciting new field of evolutionary psychology. Drawing on biology, psychology and philosophy, he argues that Darwinian science supports a view of a godless universe devoid of ultimate purpose or moral structure, but that we can still live a good life and a happy life within the confines of this view.

The Meaning of It All

The Meaning of It All PDF Author: Richard P. Feynman
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786739142
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 59

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Book Description
Many appreciate Richard P. Feynman's contributions to twentieth-century physics, but few realize how engaged he was with the world around him -- how deeply and thoughtfully he considered the religious, political, and social issues of his day. Now, a wonderful book -- based on a previously unpublished, three-part public lecture he gave at the University of Washington in 1963 -- shows us this other side of Feynman, as he expounds on the inherent conflict between science and religion, people's distrust of politicians, and our universal fascination with flying saucers, faith healing, and mental telepathy. Here we see Feynman in top form: nearly bursting into a Navajo war chant, then pressing for an overhaul of the English language (if you want to know why Johnny can't read, just look at the spelling of "friend"); and, finally, ruminating on the death of his first wife from tuberculosis. This is quintessential Feynman -- reflective, amusing, and ever enlightening.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Meaning of Everything

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Meaning of Everything PDF Author: William Badke
Publisher: Kregel Publications
ISBN: 9780825495854
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Instead of fighting for modern approaches to truth that have been rejected by the world, Badke blazes a trail, using postmodern concepts and issues to arrive at a Biblically-based conclusion.

Everything Happens for a Reason

Everything Happens for a Reason PDF Author: Mira Kirshenbaum
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 1400083214
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Can it really be true that everything happens for a reason? As amazing as it sounds, it is. There is significance in every event of our lives, from the most joyful and empowering to the inexplicable or seemingly unjust. In Everything Happens for a Reason, psychotherapist Mira Kirshenbaum encourages us to discover the meaning in what has happened to us, seeing these experiences as gifts, lessons, or opportunities. Building on more than twenty-five years of clinical research, Kirshenbaum helps us decode the confusing or unfortunate moments in our lives and find solace and strength.

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn PDF Author: Amanda Gefter
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 034553963X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS In a memoir of family bonding and cutting-edge physics for readers of Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality and Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist?, Amanda Gefter tells the story of how she conned her way into a career as a science journalist—and wound up hanging out, talking shop, and butting heads with the world’s most brilliant minds. At a Chinese restaurant outside of Philadelphia, a father asks his fifteen-year-old daughter a deceptively simple question: “How would you define nothing?” With that, the girl who once tried to fail geometry as a conscientious objector starts reading up on general relativity and quantum mechanics, as she and her dad embark on a life-altering quest for the answers to the universe’s greatest mysteries. Before Amanda Gefter became an accomplished science writer, she was a twenty-one-year-old magazine assistant willing to sneak her and her father, Warren, into a conference devoted to their physics hero, John Wheeler. Posing as journalists, Amanda and Warren met Wheeler, who offered them cryptic clues to the nature of reality: The universe is a self-excited circuit, he said. And, The boundary of a boundary is zero. Baffled, Amanda and Warren vowed to decode the phrases—and with them, the enigmas of existence. When we solve all that, they agreed, we’ll write a book. Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn is that book, a memoir of the impassioned hunt that takes Amanda and her father from New York to London to Los Alamos. Along the way, they bump up against quirky science and even quirkier personalities, including Leonard Susskind, the former Bronx plumber who invented string theory; Ed Witten, the soft-spoken genius who coined the enigmatic M-theory; even Stephen Hawking. What they discover is extraordinary: the beginnings of a monumental paradigm shift in cosmology, from a single universe we all share to a splintered reality in which each observer has her own. Reality, the Gefters learn, is radically observer-dependent, far beyond anything of which Einstein or the founders of quantum mechanics ever dreamed—with shattering consequences for our understanding of the universe’s origin. And somehow it all ties back to that conversation, to that Chinese restaurant, and to the true meaning of nothing. Throughout their journey, Amanda struggles to make sense of her own life—as her journalism career transforms from illusion to reality, as she searches for her voice as a writer, as she steps from a universe shared with her father to at last carve out one of her own. It’s a paradigm shift you might call growing up. By turns hilarious, moving, irreverent, and profound, Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn weaves together story and science in remarkable ways. By the end, you will never look at the universe the same way again. Praise for Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn “Nothing quite prepared me for this book. Wow. Reading it, I alternated between depression—how could the rest of us science writers ever match this?—and exhilaration.”—Scientific American “To Do: Read Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. Reality doesn’t have to bite.”—New York “A zany superposition of genres . . . It’s at once a coming-of-age chronicle and a father-daughter road trip to the far reaches of this universe and 10,500 others.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected

The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected PDF Author: Marcelo Gleiser
Publisher: University Press of New England
ISBN: 1611689406
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Marcelo Gleiser has had a passion for science and fishing since he was a boy growing up on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Now a world-famous theoretical physicist with hundreds of scientific articles and several books of popular science to his credit, he felt it was time to connect with nature in less theoretical ways. After seeing a fly-fishing class on the Dartmouth College green, he decided to learn to fly-fish, a hobby, he says, that teaches humility. In The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected, Gleiser travels the world to scientific conferences, fishing wherever he goes. At each stop, he ponders how in the myriad ways physics informs the act of fishing; how, in its turn, fishing serves as a lens into nature's inner workings; and how science engages with questions of meaning and spirituality, inspiring a sense of mystery and awe of the not yet known. Personal and engaging, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected is a scientist's tribute to nature, an affirmation of humanity's deep connection with and debt to Earth, and an exploration of the meaning of existence, from atom to trout to cosmos.

The Meaning of Chocolate

The Meaning of Chocolate PDF Author: Jeffrey Young
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909130432
Category : Chocolate
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description