BEYOND LIFE & DEATH; NOTHINGNESS, THE ILLUSION OF REALITY

An inquiry into the nature of reality.

Joy opens his philosophical investigation by asking about the definitions of reality. “To know what reality is, we must know what truth is….What existence is,” he writes. “These queries are, in a way or two, connected.” In order to answer these questions, Joy turns to the progress of human civilizations, stretching from ancient Sumer and Egypt to the familiar philosophical territory of the ancient Greeks. The worldviews of ancient thinkers, like Thales, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle are surveyed, as are Eastern concepts like the yin and yang of Taoism. Joy moves chronologically through history, summarizing the writings of Berkeley, Hobbes, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and more, quoting from some of their work and sprinkling in commentary of his own. Once his tour of philosophy is concluded, Joy reviews some of the modern scientific discoveries that may illuminate certain aspects of reality, like the nature of cosmic background radiation and what it says about the Big Bang, etc. “Perhaps the universe was created out of the disintegration of a preceding universe,” he writes, concisely exploring a few such theoretical possibilities. All of this might be interesting to a high school student who’s never encountered any of these concepts before, and Joy is an energetic guide for such readers. But the many shortcomings of Joy’s narrative are glaring, whether it’s his grumpiness (“Can we live without smart phones nowadays?” he grouses) or his odd decision to open by asking what reality is and then immediately digressing into protracted discussions of religion. His scientific introductions sometimes fall short (at one point he tells his readers, “In case you don’t know who Carl Sagan is just Google him, trust me”). It all ends up feeling somewhat rudimentary.

A reductive, wide-angle primer to life and reality.