Download Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine PDF

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

Author: Alan Lightman
Publsiher: Vintage
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1101871873
Rating: 4.1/5 (73 downloads)

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From the bestselling author of Einstein's Dreams—“an elegant and moving paean to our spiritual quest for meaning in an age of science" (The New York Times Book Review). As a physicist, Alan Lightman has always held a scientific view of the world. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea, Lightman was overcome by the overwhelming sensation that he was merging with something larger than himself—an eternal unity, something absolute and immaterial. The result is an inspired, lyrical meditation from the acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams that explores these seemingly contradictory impulses. Lightman draws on sources ranging from Saint Augustine's conception of absolute truth to Einstein's theory of relativity, and gives us a profound inquiry into the human desire for truth and meaning, and a journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of that quest. This small but provocative book explores the tension between our yearning for certainty and permanence versus the modern scientific view that all things in the physical world are uncertain and impermanent.

Download I Want a Better Catastrophe PDF

I Want a Better Catastrophe

Author: Andrew Boyd
Publsiher: New Society Publishers
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2023-02-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1550927760
Rating: 4.7/5 (6 downloads)

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An existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomers With global warming projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, and off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom. He searches out eight of today's leading climate thinkers — from activist Tim DeChristopher to collapse-psychologist Jamey Hecht, grassroots strategist adrienne maree brown, eco-philosopher Joana Macy, and Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer — asking them: "Is it really the end of the world? and if so, now what?" With gallows humor and a broken heart, Boyd steers readers through their climate angst as he walks his own. Boyd's journey takes him from storm-battered coastlines to pipeline blockades and "hopelessness workshops." Along the way, he maps out our existential options, and tackles some familiar dilemmas: "Should I bring kids into such a world?" "Can I lose hope when others can't afford to?" and "Why the fuck am I recycling?" He finds answers that will surprise, inspire, and maybe even make you laugh. Drawing on wisdom traditions Eastern, Western, and Indigenous, Boyd crafts an insightful and irreverent guide for achieving a "better catastrophe." This is vital reading for everyone navigating climate anxiety and grief as our world hurtles towards an unthinkable crisis.

Download Respectful Atheism PDF

Respectful Atheism

Author: Thomas B. Sheridan
Publsiher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1633886611
Rating: 4.6/5 (11 downloads)

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This is a study of God as a concept, not from the perspective of any religious tradition, but rather as belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing and loving supernatural entity as has prevailed through the ages. The book reviews arguments throughout history for and against the idea of such a God. One unique perspective is to ask what can be modeled about God in denotative language of rationality (much as modeling in science, medicine and economics) in contrast to connotative language (e.g., myth, metaphor, art and music). Since the early Greeks there have been skeptics concerning God, with progressively more questioning since the Enlightenment. Today’s “new atheists” are seen as being even more assertive, and as having little respect for religious and philosophical traditions and the natural longing for some kind of supreme being. However, as demographic trends continue to diminish the influence of the church, there is opportunity for atheism to gain respect by respecting the beliefs of others. The book ends with some considerations of what it means to respect others’ beliefs and cultural traditions without abandoning a sincere disbelief in a supernatural being.

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Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Author: Ozan Varol
Publsiher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1541762614
Rating: 4.2/5 (14 downloads)

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* One of Inc.com's "6 Books You Need to Read in 2020 (According to Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, and Adam Grant)"* Adam Grant's # 1 pick of his top 20 books of 2020* One of 6 Groundbreaking Books of Spring 2020 (according to Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant). A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible. Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process -- a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets. Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one. In this accessible and practical book, Ozan Varol reveals nine simple strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life -- whether it's landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Today, thinking like a rocket scientist is a necessity. We all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our lives. Those who can tackle these problems -- without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking -- enjoy an extraordinary advantage. Think Like a Rocket Scientist will inspire you to take your own moonshot and enable you to achieve liftoff.

Download The Call to Unite PDF

The Call to Unite

Author: Tim Shriver
Publsiher: Penguin
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0593298241
Rating: 4.8/5 (41 downloads)

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From some of our most prominent spiritual and religious leaders, poets and thinkers, singers and writers, a book of wisdom to light our way in dark times. At the start of 2020, in what felt already like an age of disorder, our world faced one of the gravest global challenges in a century. Covid-19 raced around the earth, and chaos erupted. Yet in the midst of this crisis, billions of human beings responded with love. Across the globe, people sought to connect, whether in person from a socially distant six feet or via a screen from 10,000 miles away. In that moment, Tim Shriver saw an opportunity for those hungry for community to answer a call to heal, a call to hope, a call to unite. He asked monks and nuns, artists and activists, nurses and doctors, ex-presidents and ex-cons to come together to share messages of inspiration, transformation, and love. This book captures the spirit of that 24-hour event. Featuring stories and insights from Bishop TD Jakes, Elizabeth Gilbert, Van Jones, Amy Grant, Dr. Rheeda Walker, Pastor Rick Warren, Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Jewel, Deepak Chopra and many others, The Call to Unite offers readers a book of wisdom to turn to in hard times - filled with prayers, poems, spiritual insights and lessons to live by that will stand the test of time. Those seeking affirmation, solace, and inspiration need only look inside for guidance in finding the light in any crisis. Only in embracing each other can we amplify the love that creates our global community. Only in coming together can we be our happiest, and our best.

Download Extraterrestrial PDF

Extraterrestrial

Author: Avi Loeb
Publsiher: Houghton Mifflin
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0358278147
Rating: 4.8/5 (47 downloads)

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Harvard's top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology from a distant star

Download Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Ordinary PDF

Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Ordinary

Author: Raymond D. Boisvert
Publsiher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2023-02-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350347922
Rating: 4.7/5 (22 downloads)

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The standard interpretation keeps repeating that Camus is the prototypical “absurdist” thinker. Such a reading freezes Camus at the stage at which he wrote The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. By taking seriously how (1) Camus was always searching and (2) the rest of his corpus, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Ordinary corrects the one-sided, and thus faulty, depiction of Camus as committed to a philosophy of absurdism. His guiding project, which he explicitly acknowledged, was an attempt to get beyond nihilism, the general dismissal of value and meaning in ordinary life. Tracing this project via Camus's works, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Ordinary, offers a new lens for thinking about the well-known author.

Download The Sirens of Mars PDF

The Sirens of Mars

Author: Sarah Stewart Johnson
Publsiher: Crown
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1101904828
Rating: 4.4/5 (28 downloads)

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“Sarah Stewart Johnson interweaves her own coming-of-age story as a planetary scientist with a vivid history of the exploration of Mars in this celebration of human curiosity, passion, and perseverance.”—Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams WINNER OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA AWARD FOR SCIENCE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Times (UK) • Library Journal “Lovely . . . Johnson’s prose swirls with lyrical wonder, as varied and multihued as the apricot deserts, butterscotch skies and blue sunsets of Mars.”—Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book Review Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum—on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science. In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own. Johnson’s fascination with Mars began as a child in Kentucky, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth’s most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey—as a female scientist and a mother—with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth: This other world has been our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings. Empathetic and evocative, The Sirens of Mars offers an unlikely natural history of a place where no human has ever set foot, while providing a vivid portrait of our quest to defy our isolation in the cosmos.

Download Spirituality and Mental Health Across Cultures PDF

Spirituality and Mental Health Across Cultures

Author: Alexander Moreira-Almeida
Publsiher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2021-08-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0198846835
Rating: 4.6/5 (35 downloads)

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This resource provides evidence-based guidance on the implications of religion and spirituality on mental health.

Download Transcendentalism Yesterday and Today PDF

Transcendentalism Yesterday and Today

Author: Barry M. Andrews
Publsiher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1664150137
Rating: 4.0/5 (37 downloads)

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Transcendentalism isn’t just a phase in Unitarian Universalist history, it is an on-going source of inspiration for Unitarian Universalists today. Drawing upon ancient wisdom and modern knowledge, Transcendentalist spirituality is at once timeless and timely. The Transcendentalists sought to cultivate the soul through such practices as walks in nature, contemplation, solitude, reading, simple living, religious cosmopolitanism, and action from principle. Unitarian Universalists today will find these practices congenial to their own spiritual growth. The Transcendentalists show us that by concerted effort we can become receptive to insights that will elevate our spirit and motivate us in our efforts to make society more just and to protect the natural world.

Download Learning With Leonardo: Unfinished Perfection: Making children cleverer: what does Da Vinci tell us? PDF

Learning With Leonardo: Unfinished Perfection: Making children cleverer: what does Da Vinci tell us?

Author: Ian Warwick
Publsiher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2019-03-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1398383023
Rating: 4.3/5 (23 downloads)

Download Learning With Leonardo: Unfinished Perfection: Making children cleverer: what does Da Vinci tell us? Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

What are the seven key concepts that drove Da Vinci's inventive thinking and how can we still use them to improve our own creativity, 500 years after his death? In pursuit of the unified learning principles that sit at the heart of his work, Ian Warwick and Ray Speakman brilliantly explore the approaches that we need to take to make our own learning more original and thoughtful.

Download Great Minds Don’t Think Alike PDF

Great Minds Don’t Think Alike

Author: Marcelo Gleiser
Publsiher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0231555377
Rating: 4.5/5 (77 downloads)

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Does technology change who we are, and if so, in what ways? Can humanity transcend physical bodies and spaces? Will AI and genetic engineering help us reach new heights or will they unleash dystopias? How do we face mortality, our own and that of our warming planet? Questions like these—which are only growing more urgent—can be answered only by drawing on different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing. They challenge us to bridge the divide between the sciences and the humanities and bring together perspectives that are too often kept apart. Great Minds Don’t Think Alike presents conversations among leading scientists, philosophers, historians, and public intellectuals that exemplify openness to diverse viewpoints and the productive exchange of ideas. Pulitzer and Templeton Prize winners, MacArthur “genius” grant awardees, and other acclaimed writers and thinkers debate the big questions: who we are, the nature of reality, science and religion, consciousness and materialism, and the mysteries of time. In so doing, they also inquire into how uniting experts from different areas of study to consider these topics might help us address the existential risks we face today. Convened and moderated by the physicist and author Marcelo Gleiser, these public dialogues model constructive engagement between the sciences and the humanities—and show why intellectual cooperation is necessary to shape our collective future. Contributors include David Chalmers and Antonio Damasio; Sean Carroll and B. Alan Wallace; Patricia Churchland and Jill Tarter; Rebecca Goldstein and Alan Lightman; Jimena Canales and Paul Davies; Ed Boyden and Mark O’Connell; Elizabeth Kolbert and Siddhartha Mukherjee; Jeremy DeSilva, David Grinspoon, and Tasneem Zehra Husain.

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Philosophical Provocations

Author: John G. Gunnell
Publsiher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 107
Release: 2022-11-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1527589072
Rating: 4.9/5 (72 downloads)

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This book presents a general critical assessment of both the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophical practice. Although it offers a comprehensive account of the author’s philosophical position and of matters that would be of interest to professional philosophers, the book will appeal to any educated reader, rather than only philosophers. It is inspired by the attempt to explain certain philosophical issues to individuals outside academia, and it distils some complex philosophical arguments in a manner unencumbered by much of the typical academic paraphernalia.

Download The Transcendent Brain PDF

The Transcendent Brain

Author: Alan Lightman
Publsiher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2023-03-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0593317424
Rating: 4.7/5 (24 downloads)

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From the best-selling author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to the question, Can the scientifically inclined still hold space for spirituality? Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences? According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. Can strict materialism explain our appreciation of beauty? Or our feelings of connection to nature and to other people? Is there a physical basis for consciousness, the most slippery of all scientific problems? Lightman weaves these investigations together to propose what he calls “spiritual materialism”—the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview. In his view, the breadth of the human condition is not only rooted in material atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution. What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.

Download Summary and Analysis Extraterrestrial PDF

Summary and Analysis Extraterrestrial

Author: Quick Savant
Publsiher: Quick Savant
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2022-05-01
Genre: Science
ISBN:
Rating: 4./5 ( downloads)

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This is a summary book, based on the original work by Avi Loeb. New York Times Bestseller | Wall Street Journal Bestseller | Publishers Weekly Bestseller | Publishers Marketplace 2020 Buzz Book | Amazon Best Book of the Year | Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award “Provocative and thrilling ... Loeb asks us to think big and to expect the unexpected.” —Alan Lightman, New York Times bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Harvard’s top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology from a distant star. In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top astronomer, showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit, and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake. There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization. In Extraterrestrial, Loeb takes readers inside the thrilling story of the first interstellar visitor to be spotted in our solar system. He outlines his controversial theory and its profound implications: for science, for religion, and for the future of our species and our planet. A mind-bending journey through the furthest reaches of science, space-time, and the human imagination, Extraterrestrial challenges readers to aim for the stars—and to think critically about what’s out there, no matter how strange it seems.

Download T3XTURE No. 5 PDF

T3XTURE No. 5

Author: Ioana Barac
Publsiher: Hapticity Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781736818114
Rating: 4.6/5 (181 downloads)

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T3XTURE is an annual, international publication for architects, artists, writers, and designers interested in the haptic in architecture and art. Texture in architecture is the layering of geography, structure, space, constructions, materiality, digital fabrications, passages, ideas, and the movements of human activity in a composition thus determining the overall qualities of a form or place. T3xture seeks to elevate the discourse on texture to the level currently paid to space and tectonics. Each issue collects architectural projects, drawings, poems, and photographs from contributors from all over the world. In this issue we explore this diad of repose and motion via an interview, several original essays, and real and speculative projects. "Capturing a Moment," our interview with novelist, essayist, physicist, and educator, Alan Paige Lightman, covers a broad range of topics in his career and touches on the experiential aspects of repose. To Lightman, renowned physicist and author of Einstein's Dream" and more recently, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, and more, repose is a state of mind. In "The Ornamentor Within" Ioana Barac discusses how to create an ecosystem of meaningful experiences in an existing lobby space. "Terra Turrita Felix," a project by architect, Beniamino Servino architectural practice based in Caserta, Italy, is the focus of our essay on his geological repose to volcanoes, "Vesuvius in Repose." "Rising Unity" describes a Traveling Memorial Sculpture for Victims of Opioid Overdose. It was commissioned by Demand Zero & For Cameron and realized by Atelier Cue in 2020. Nicole Cullinan, who writes on architecture and the arts in Melbourne, Australia asks, "Has Our Love Affair with Open-Plan Living Finally Ended?" After extended lockdowns in Melbourne and with many in the world working from home, is the open-plan becoming obsolete? The lingering question is: can one find repose in a house with no corners? Miriam Gusevich, of GM2 Architects reflects on the value of repose in times of crisis in a piece titled "Urban Pentimento: stories of repose, repentance, and repair. " "Plug-In Bridge: From Hermes to Hestia." A project by Vincent Peu Duvallon, DESA Architect, RIBA, Assoc. AIA, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China, transforms an infrastructure into a series of public and resting spaces in their proposal for the valley of Caocun, in the south of China. In "A Place for Peace: Taming an Urban Mèlange," architect Khashayar Shahkolahy brings a tranquil respite to the hustle and bustle of city life. His proposal for a nondenominational sanctuary offers harried students refuge in a chaotic urban intersection; instead of disrupting nature on an existing campus lawn, he proposes a calming oasis amidst the chaos. In response to this issue's topic, Craig Purcell diagrams a framework for repose and motion in the flat plane of a painting in process. Guidelines forming the framework that carries repose move through time and space. For Antoine Predock, the body in motion-choreographed in the landscape-is a theme throughout his body of work. Janet Little Jeffers photographs, appearing in the interview with Alan Lightman, are part of her ongoing body of work that emerged from many hours of hiking in the woods during the months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Download Extraterrestrial PDF

Extraterrestrial

Author: Avi Loeb
Publsiher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0358274559
Rating: 4.4/5 (59 downloads)

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New York Times Bestseller | Wall Street Journal Bestseller | Publishers Weekly Bestseller | Publishers Marketplace 2020 Buzz Book | Amazon Best Book of the Year | Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award “Provocative and thrilling ... Loeb asks us to think big and to expect the unexpected.” —Alan Lightman, New York Times bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Harvard’s top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology from a distant star. In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top astronomer, showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit, and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake. There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization. In Extraterrestrial, Loeb takes readers inside the thrilling story of the first interstellar visitor to be spotted in our solar system. He outlines his controversial theory and its profound implications: for science, for religion, and for the future of our species and our planet. A mind-bending journey through the furthest reaches of science, space-time, and the human imagination, Extraterrestrial challenges readers to aim for the stars—and to think critically about what’s out there, no matter how strange it seems.