A dense philosophical exploration of the cosmos—not for the faint of heart.
The universe explained by a particle physicist.
Päs, a professor of theoretical physics and author of The Perfect Wave, examines “what we actually mean when we talk about ‘the universe.’ ” It can’t be everything we see at night; our Milky Way Galaxy, which has 100 billion stars, is only one of trillions of galaxies. It can’t be everything astronomers see because invisible gas clouds contain 10 times more matter. It can’t be ordinary matter because there is five times more “dark matter,” whose exotic makeup no one understands. The universe itself may be a meaningless concept because there may be an innumerable number of them in an uncountable proliferating “multiverse.” Standing under the stars, Päs feels that he is one with the universe. The notion that everything in the universe is part of one unified whole is called “monism,” a belief that was codified by the ancient Greeks. Most scholars agree that the Greeks invented science and made important discoveries. They also got many things wrong, but Päs focuses on philosophy, where even concepts of “right” and “wrong” are debatable. The author devotes the first third of the book to his specialty, quantum physics, in which “objects get so completely and entirely merged that it is impossible to say anything at all about the properties of their constituents anymore.” Serious explanations of quantum physics require close attention, so most readers will breathe a sigh of relief when Päs switches gears to deliver a history of science and religion in Western culture, which he describes as a battle between Christianity and monistic scholars, who were persecuted until the Renaissance, when modern science revived the ideas of ancient Greece. Päs has no doubt that the great thinkers (e.g., Spinoza and Kant) and scientists (Galileo, Newton, Einstein) were monists. This is difficult stuff, but the glossary helps.
A dense philosophical exploration of the cosmos—not for the faint of heart.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781541674851
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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