by PARAMAN VS ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2018
A remarkably inventive but less than rigorous cosmological exploration.
An attempt to combine ancient spiritual wisdom and modern physics into a coherent view of the universe.
Debut author VS boldly adopts the grandest of aspirations—to explain the totality of what is. The author begins by calling into question the correspondence between reality and the limited scope of empirical observation, and he suggests that there is at least the possibility of a nontemporal fifth dimension that cannot be detected by ordinary perception. Within that dimension—which he sometimes describes as somehow existing within us—there is a waterlike substance made up of particles that could be described as “gravitons.” Through various physical processes, the universe as we know it developed out of this substance—what the author names “Ocean D.” Gravity, the “dominant force of the universe,” therefore is “nothing but the buoyancy of celestial bodies on Ocean D.” Furthermore, VS argues that consciousness itself is a fundamental building block of the cosmos and ubiquitously distributed among all things. Finally, this permits a collapsing of the self into the cosmos, creating a monistic unity between the self and the universe. The moral implication is that the universe is potentially structured around a karmic causality and that we can transcend our experience of perceptual duality to achieve oneness with all things. VS provides a panoramic synopsis of the history of thought on gravity, not only discussing Western scientific luminaries like Isaac Newton and Nicolaus Copernicus, but also precursors to them like the ancient Persian mathematician Mohammed Al-Khwarizmi. The author’s scientific objectives are impressively lofty, nothing short of reconciling the contradictory worlds of quantum mechanics and general relativity. VS’s proposals, however, are unrestrainedly speculative, the products of a fertile imagination unfortunately combined with a dismissal of empirical evidence. Also, the book is confusingly incondite, prone to digressive meandering. Finally, the author’s philosophical ingenuity is often undermined by ill-disciplined prose: “All matter formed through the process of vacuum evaporation and desublimation from the boiling of Ocean D as the vacuum pressure increases within the bubble, embodies in reality nothing but projections of the Ocean D from the fifth dimension into our four-dimensional bubble universe.”
A remarkably inventive but less than rigorous cosmological exploration.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 211
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
More by Daniel Kahneman
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.