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The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe[s] Report
From the prizewinning author who has been called "the greatest science writer in the world" comes this delightfully comprehensive and comprehensible report on how science today envisions the universe as a whole.
Timothy Ferris provides a clear, elegantly written overview of current research and a forecast of where cosmological theory is likely to go in the twenty-first century. He explores the questions that have occurred to even casual readers -- who are curious about nature on the largest scales: What does it mean to say that the universe is "expanding," or that space is "curved"? -- and sheds light on the possibility that our universe is only one among many universes, each with its own physical laws and prospects for the emergence of life.
Timothy Ferris provides a clear, elegantly written overview of current research and a forecast of where cosmological theory is likely to go in the twenty-first century. He explores the questions that have occurred to even casual readers -- who are curious about nature on the largest scales: What does it mean to say that the universe is "expanding," or that space is "curved"? -- and sheds light on the possibility that our universe is only one among many universes, each with its own physical laws and prospects for the emergence of life.
393 pages, Paperback
First published May 2, 1997
40 people are currently reading
2451 people want to read
About the author
Timothy Ferris
59 books252 followersTimothy Ferris is the author of a dozen books (most recently The Science of Liberty), plus 200 articles and essays, and three documentary films—"The Creation of the Universe," “Life Beyond Earth,” and “Seeing in the Dark”—seen by over 20 million viewers.
Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft.
Called “the best popular science writer in the English language” by The Christian Science Monitor and “the best science writer of his generation” by The Washington Post, Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines at four universities. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft.
Called “the best popular science writer in the English language” by The Christian Science Monitor and “the best science writer of his generation” by The Washington Post, Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines at four universities. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
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December 2, 2021
Charles Darwin's famous last sentence of On the Origin of Species has the only example of the word "evolve" appearing in the book, and it is the final word of the last sentence: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst the planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms so beautiful and so wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Niels Bohr called Paul Dirac "the purest soul." He rarely spoke. He once answered the question about what he liked best in America with the one word answer: "Potatoes." Another time when someone said, "It is very windy outside," he left, went outside, and returned to say, "Yes." He famously said, "It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment."
Heisenberg once said outside a swimming pool in 1931: "These people go in and out all very nicely dressed. Do you conclude from this that they swim dressed?"
The word quark came from Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Here is how Gell-Mann described it: "I was paging through Finnegan's Wake as I often do, trying to understand bits and pieces--you know how you read Finnegan's Wake--and I came across 'Three quarks for Muster Mark.' I said, 'That's it! Three quarks make a neutron or a proton.'"
Einstein realized that a falling man feels no force of gravity.
The Latin "vacuus" means "empty." A vacuum is nothingness, an absence of everything. That presents a logical difficulty. If the vacuum is, literally, nothing, how can it be said to exist? Aristotle critiqued Democritus's teacher Leucippus in that way. It is contradictory to say the void exists and that it is nothing at the same time. How then can a universe exist?
"Omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit unum" or "For producing everything out of nothing one principle is enough."--Leibniz.
Soren Kierkegaard called paradoxes "grandiose thoughts in embryo." Oscar Wilde said "The way of paradox is the way of truth." And Leibniz said "there is hardly a paradox without utility."
Cosmogony raises three main paradoxes. I say them all in this way: Did something come out of nothing? or was something always there? Both seem impossible.
The last words of Gertrude Stein according to Alice B. Toklas: "What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?"
Gertrude Stein on modern art: "A picture may seem extraordinarily strange to you and after some time not only does it not seem strange but it is impossible to find what there was in it that was strange."
Vladimir Nabokov spoke of the "ominous and ludicrous luxury . . . of human consciousness."
Erwin Schrodinger: "If you cannot--in the long run--tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless."
God said to Abraham, "But for me, you would not be here." "I know that, Lord," Abraham answered, "but were I not here there would be no one to think about you."--Traditional Jewish tale.
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."--James Branch Cabell.
In a Jewish theological seminar there was an hours-long discussion about proofs of the existence of God. After some hours, one rabbi got up and said, "God is so great, he does not even need to exist."--Victor Weisskopf.
Bertrand Russell: "If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts."
Niels Bohr called Paul Dirac "the purest soul." He rarely spoke. He once answered the question about what he liked best in America with the one word answer: "Potatoes." Another time when someone said, "It is very windy outside," he left, went outside, and returned to say, "Yes." He famously said, "It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment."
Heisenberg once said outside a swimming pool in 1931: "These people go in and out all very nicely dressed. Do you conclude from this that they swim dressed?"
The word quark came from Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Here is how Gell-Mann described it: "I was paging through Finnegan's Wake as I often do, trying to understand bits and pieces--you know how you read Finnegan's Wake--and I came across 'Three quarks for Muster Mark.' I said, 'That's it! Three quarks make a neutron or a proton.'"
Einstein realized that a falling man feels no force of gravity.
The Latin "vacuus" means "empty." A vacuum is nothingness, an absence of everything. That presents a logical difficulty. If the vacuum is, literally, nothing, how can it be said to exist? Aristotle critiqued Democritus's teacher Leucippus in that way. It is contradictory to say the void exists and that it is nothing at the same time. How then can a universe exist?
"Omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit unum" or "For producing everything out of nothing one principle is enough."--Leibniz.
Soren Kierkegaard called paradoxes "grandiose thoughts in embryo." Oscar Wilde said "The way of paradox is the way of truth." And Leibniz said "there is hardly a paradox without utility."
Cosmogony raises three main paradoxes. I say them all in this way: Did something come out of nothing? or was something always there? Both seem impossible.
The last words of Gertrude Stein according to Alice B. Toklas: "What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?"
Gertrude Stein on modern art: "A picture may seem extraordinarily strange to you and after some time not only does it not seem strange but it is impossible to find what there was in it that was strange."
Vladimir Nabokov spoke of the "ominous and ludicrous luxury . . . of human consciousness."
Erwin Schrodinger: "If you cannot--in the long run--tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless."
God said to Abraham, "But for me, you would not be here." "I know that, Lord," Abraham answered, "but were I not here there would be no one to think about you."--Traditional Jewish tale.
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."--James Branch Cabell.
In a Jewish theological seminar there was an hours-long discussion about proofs of the existence of God. After some hours, one rabbi got up and said, "God is so great, he does not even need to exist."--Victor Weisskopf.
Bertrand Russell: "If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts."
February 21, 2011
This book dates itself quite frequently. Which normally I would be very bothered by. But you could tell that the author was trying to stay current with his time and his writing was wonderful. It just amazes me how much cosmology has changed in ten years! He was so timid with inflation it was staggering. I wonder what the authors thoughts on the newer cyclical models are? What does he think about membranes and so forth? Who knows? It wasn't in question at the time. In fact a great deal of this book wanders "around" physics and has little to do with modern cosmology at all! Oh how far we have come. The reason I absolutely loved this book? Because he creates an undertone throughout the work that says "what he thinks" without coming out and actually saying it directly. I think that is a damned good idea! Especially in the world of science. And frankly his undertones I will laud: The Copenhagen interpretation! Common! No one has not struggled with that internally, I don't care what you want to say. Even Hawking said of Shrodingers cat that his "solution" was a shotgun. Its a bad joke but seriously guys! You get that internal struggle from the author as well, and I applaud it. His quick but understated remarks about quantum tunneling and quantum fluxation? That is freaking hilarious! Did no one else pick up on that? He couldn't even help himself with the Dark Matter rap. You could see him wondering if it was just a bit much and then just saying oh fuck it. I love this author. I would love to read more from him.
August 8, 2010
This book is less engaging than Ferris' "Coming of Age in the Milky Way." There's less of a story here and more of a status report on the state of the science lying at the frontiers of cosmology (as of 1997). If there is one underlying theme to this book it is that we live in a quantum universe, but we have evolved in a world that is best understood in terms of classical physics. This helps explain why the discussion of cosmology is so challenging for the general reader. We try our best to grasp what we can.
Ferris has a few nuggets that stand out. All spaces that exist today were originally in the same place he says. The Big Bang (which Ferris notes is challenged by another theory that our Big Bang is one of many Big Bangs) created space and time. Space is stretching, and the universe is not expanding into pre-existing space. What lies beyond ever-stretching space is not clear in Ferris. "Nothing" is not a satisfying answer. Ferris says that Einstein's theory of gravity does away with gravitational force and that all forces are consequences of geometry. That nugget, while tantalizing, is not clear. The universe begins, Ferris comments, in a high-energy state that forms matter as energy cools. Structure in the universe, from atoms to galaxies, are "cathedrals of cavernous space" with infinitely vast areas of emptiness interspersed with higher density matter. That is nicely descriptive. Ferris says that galaxies and local groups of galaxies that form supercluster galaxies are only part of the story for there are also supercluster complexes, billions of light years across. This puts a finer point on the scales that are involved.
This is all great stuff. Ferris' review of cosmological science indicates the universe has a history and is evolving, and this stands in contrast with Plato and other philosophers and Hindu cosmology that view the cosmos in terms of "stasis" and "eternal return." There's a relevance here for philosophies that anchor their thought in views about ultimate reality. One physicist says we study physics so that philosophy is not non-sense. Less kind is a quote from Niels Bohr who comments that "It is hopeless to have any kind of understanding between scientists and philosophers directly....All that philosophers have ever written is purely drivel." That said, and as to what nevertheless might be a central observation drawn from Ferris' summary of all of this high-altitude cosmology, if our Big Bang began as a high energy state, and if at the basic quantum level matter and energy (particle and wave) are interchangeable, and if one understands energy as motion, not stasis, this would lend itself to the conclusion that the only permanent reality is change itself.
As for the physicists' description of their own work, Ferris has a good summary of eminent scientists who urge that their work be simplified and "communicated in the common human language." Ferris refers to one who says that "If the basic idea is too complicated to fit on a T-shirt, it's probably wrong." This I suppose explains E=MC squared.
Ferris has a few nuggets that stand out. All spaces that exist today were originally in the same place he says. The Big Bang (which Ferris notes is challenged by another theory that our Big Bang is one of many Big Bangs) created space and time. Space is stretching, and the universe is not expanding into pre-existing space. What lies beyond ever-stretching space is not clear in Ferris. "Nothing" is not a satisfying answer. Ferris says that Einstein's theory of gravity does away with gravitational force and that all forces are consequences of geometry. That nugget, while tantalizing, is not clear. The universe begins, Ferris comments, in a high-energy state that forms matter as energy cools. Structure in the universe, from atoms to galaxies, are "cathedrals of cavernous space" with infinitely vast areas of emptiness interspersed with higher density matter. That is nicely descriptive. Ferris says that galaxies and local groups of galaxies that form supercluster galaxies are only part of the story for there are also supercluster complexes, billions of light years across. This puts a finer point on the scales that are involved.
This is all great stuff. Ferris' review of cosmological science indicates the universe has a history and is evolving, and this stands in contrast with Plato and other philosophers and Hindu cosmology that view the cosmos in terms of "stasis" and "eternal return." There's a relevance here for philosophies that anchor their thought in views about ultimate reality. One physicist says we study physics so that philosophy is not non-sense. Less kind is a quote from Niels Bohr who comments that "It is hopeless to have any kind of understanding between scientists and philosophers directly....All that philosophers have ever written is purely drivel." That said, and as to what nevertheless might be a central observation drawn from Ferris' summary of all of this high-altitude cosmology, if our Big Bang began as a high energy state, and if at the basic quantum level matter and energy (particle and wave) are interchangeable, and if one understands energy as motion, not stasis, this would lend itself to the conclusion that the only permanent reality is change itself.
As for the physicists' description of their own work, Ferris has a good summary of eminent scientists who urge that their work be simplified and "communicated in the common human language." Ferris refers to one who says that "If the basic idea is too complicated to fit on a T-shirt, it's probably wrong." This I suppose explains E=MC squared.
June 9, 2022
An example of bad timing, this book was written nine years after Ferris' Coming of Age in the Milky Way, which I read two months ago, yet in some respects it seems much more dated. Partly this is because the earlier book was largely a historical survey of astronomy and related science up to 1988, while this one is more a survey of what was currently believed in 1997 with history mainly confined to the first chapter. Compared to the earlier book, there is somewhat more about dark matter, and there were already a handful of exoplanets known. This book was written in the heyday of string theory, which plays more of a role in his discussions, although it is not actually about physics.
The biggest problem is that the main theme of the book is that Omega=1, that is that the Universe is essentially "flat", with the total of mass and energy close to the "critical density". Of course, this is probably true and has been confirmed by recent observations, but it is discussed here on the assumption that the expansion of the Universe is slowing down due to this gravitational attraction, which it is not. Actually, the first evidence that the expansion is actually accelerating came a year after the book was published, so it became outdated almost immediately. This is undoubtedly why it is not as much of a "classic" as the older book.
This is somewhat unfortunate, as it is very well-written at a much higher level of popularization and would have been a good simple summary of cosmology at the time. The writing is very clear and parts of the book are still worth reading, such as his discussion of the large-scale structures in the Universe. His discussion of Bohm's views on quantum theory is interesting, and I hadn't realized that Feynman's methods were connected with Everett. One annoyance, however, is the last chapter, which is devoted to a wishy-washy discussion of religion in relation to cosmology, which concludes that religion and cosmology should be kept separate -- which is a good reason why he shouldn't have written about religion in a cosmology book to begin with.
The biggest problem is that the main theme of the book is that Omega=1, that is that the Universe is essentially "flat", with the total of mass and energy close to the "critical density". Of course, this is probably true and has been confirmed by recent observations, but it is discussed here on the assumption that the expansion of the Universe is slowing down due to this gravitational attraction, which it is not. Actually, the first evidence that the expansion is actually accelerating came a year after the book was published, so it became outdated almost immediately. This is undoubtedly why it is not as much of a "classic" as the older book.
This is somewhat unfortunate, as it is very well-written at a much higher level of popularization and would have been a good simple summary of cosmology at the time. The writing is very clear and parts of the book are still worth reading, such as his discussion of the large-scale structures in the Universe. His discussion of Bohm's views on quantum theory is interesting, and I hadn't realized that Feynman's methods were connected with Everett. One annoyance, however, is the last chapter, which is devoted to a wishy-washy discussion of religion in relation to cosmology, which concludes that religion and cosmology should be kept separate -- which is a good reason why he shouldn't have written about religion in a cosmology book to begin with.
July 16, 2024
I love astrophysics/cosmology stuff, so I thought this would be a decent read, and it is. Sometimes, my eyes glazed over with some of the technical stuff, and it was published in 1997, so it's quite dated, but still a good read. I would enjoy a more modern version better now that we've got the JWST & a bit more understanding of some things we've since found thru that.
March 13, 2023
A SUMMARY OF ‘WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE COSMOS’
Science writer Timothy Ferris wrote in the first chapter of this 1997 book, “This book will summarize what we know about the cosmos and how we know it, and will speculate about the directions cosmology may take in the future. We need first to outline how science arrived at its present understanding of the age, scale, and evolution of the universe.” (Pg. 23)
He explains, “In quantum physics, space is not empty but is roiling with ‘virtual’ particles---ghostly particles that normally exist for but a moment, constantly boiling up out of the vacuum, splitting up, then recombining and subsiding away again… In flat space, virtual particles cannot long survive: They exist by borrowing energy from the vacuum, and normally such energy is in short supply. But the steeply curved spacetime at the black hole event horizon contains enormous amounts of TIDAL energy. This tidal energy is gravitational in origin. It arises from the difference in gravitational force exerted between two points at different distances from the black hole… virtual particles … can be promoted from virtual (i.e., short-lived) to ‘real’ (meaning permanent) particles… one of the newly promoted particles may fall into the black hole while the other escapes. As a result, the black hole is continually radiating particles, and thereby losing mass.” (Pg. 97-98)
He explains, “Their putative ability to transport space travelers millions of light years in an instant has made wormholes a feature of science fiction novels whose plots demand an intergalactic rapid-transit system. In practice… many difficulties would beset a wormhole cosmonaut. First, nobody knows where wormholes exist… Second, a cosmonaut might not survive a wormhole passage… Third, it’s not clear that a wormhole, if one did pop up, would stay open long enough for anyone to jump into it… Nevertheless, if black holes have taught science anything it is that one should not reject a promising idea solely because it leads to bizarre conclusions… Kip Thorne proposed that it might be possible to hold wormholes open… [if we] thread the wormhole with ‘exotic’ material. This is a theoretical form of matter … Thorne speculated that an advanced civilization might be able to gather or manufacture exotic material and use it to open up wormholes for travel… The Thorne conjecture raised the possibility that wormholes could be used as time machines, capable of transporting wormhole travelers … into the past… Traveling into the past of one’s own universe violates causality and thus creates severe paradoxes… and many physicists believe time travel to be literally impossible.” (Pg. 100-101)
He states, “On the terrestrial level, MASSIVE EXTINCTIONS… punctuate the fossil record… One of the … best-studied … occasioned the break between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs and most of their contemporaries suddenly expired… Such catastrophes … [are] clearing the way for the emergence of new species that would otherwise have had little chance of displacing senior life-forms … As we descended from … a little lemurlike creature that cowered in trees as the dinosaurs thundered by---we may owe our existence to the comet that made a mess of things 65,000 millennia ago.” (Pg. 175-176)
He addresses ‘Creative Evolution,’ which “mean[s] that evolution is genuinely innovative---that its products cannot be predicted in detail… The concept of creative evolution cannot be confirmed empirically… So creative evolution apparently does reside beyond the purview of science. It is, in short, a philosophical notion, not a scientific one. As such it is readily dismissed… But those who prefer to entertain the whole rainbow of human thought… may wish to give the doctrine of creative evolution a fair hearing.” (Pg. 195-196)
He acknowledges, “Twenty years ago, the tools that promised to dig the deepest went by the rather hyperbolic name of grand unified theories, of GUTs. They were all the rage… The idea was that … early in the first second of time, there were not three forces but one… the right GUT … would show how this force operated, thus providing a unified account of all the forces other than gravity. Alas, this pregnant idea... hasn’t worked out terribly well…” (Pg. 217)
Turning to string theory, he reports, “Skeptics view string sophistication as a liability, its higher math a castle destined to remain floating in thin air. String theory, they complain, is in many ways more complicated than the old physics it purports to replace---and it cannot yet even specify the old models… Hopefully both routes will converge at the same apex---a theory that combines curved space and the quantum principle, depicting particles as strings and thus as shards of space.” (Pg. 225-227)
He suggests, “inflation seems a good bet to become part of the standard big bang cosmology… It offers adept explanations of why the universe is isotropic and homogeneous… and how galaxies came into being… It has already made two testable predictions… And always important in science as in art, the inflationary hypothesis … raises new and intriguing avenues of inquiry.” (Pg. 241-242)
He explains that Andrei Linde suggests that “If… the bubble of which our observable universe constitutes a small part is but one among many bubbles that continue to nucleate more bubbles as they go, then it is pointless to inquire which was the ‘original’ bubble. Each bubble owes its birth to another bubble, which came from another bubble, and so on.” (Pg. 263)
He asserts, “This is quantum weirdness: Interfering with one part of a quantum system alters the results observed in another part, even when the system has been enlarged to enormous dimensions…quantum systems are said to exhibit NONLOCALITY. They act like an intimately connected whole, regardless of whether their parts are far removed from each other… Three explanations for it … have emerged. The first, the ‘Copenhagen interpretation,’ asserts that … we cannot know the state of a quantum system until it is measured… The second, or ‘many worlds’ interpretation, begins with the astounding premise that the entire universe splits, with each act of measurement, into two universes, in one of which the particle has the qualities we measure and in the other of which it resolves itself into another potential state… The third interpretation … portrays quantum systems as mechanically linked… They are said to accomplish this by means of a ‘guiding wave’ that has not yet been observed.” (Pg. 269-271)
He continues, “The Copenhagen interpretation … declares that … The act of measurement turns potentiality into actuality, resolving the question of what the particle actually ‘is’… So the Copenhagen interpretation implicates the observer in what he or she observes. Observers cannot arbitrarily alter reality… but they can make of a photon either wave or particle.” (Pg. 272-273) He goes on, “The magic carpet of the Copenhagen interpretation is the act of observation. It is by making an observation … that one ‘collapses the wave function,’ thus resolving the superposed system into one or the other of its states.” (Pg. 276)
He expands on the ‘many worlds’ interpretation which makes “a genuinely flabbergasting supposition: It states that the universe is constantly splitting apart, making copies of itself that are identical except for the outcome of each particular observation. Each time a physicist checks to see whether a photon is a particle or a wave, the universe divides, creating two laboratories containing two physicists, one of whom sees a particle and the other a wave… This notion is certainly sufficiently bold to satisfy [Niels] Bohr’s demand that new ideas be ‘crazy enough’ to contribute to quantum theory…” (Pg. 278-279)
Could the universe be a hologram, as David Bohm (and others) have suggested? “I don’t know how to frame such a concept in contemporary scientific terms, so I won’t try. Such difficulties may… be a signal that there is no ‘implicate’ side to the universe---that this line of thought is just hot air. But they might also mean that, as Bohm believed, we are indeed dealing with a new ‘order,’ which must therefore evolve its own concepts and language and cannot properly be analyzed…” (Pg. 287)
He explains, ‘The question of whether we are alone in the universe is ancient. What’s new is that we are coming to possess tools that could give us a shot at answering it. Existing radio telescopes are capable of detecting signals transmitted by an alien civilization… anywhere in our quarter of the Milky Way galaxy… theorizing has produced two sharply different estimations of whether there is life out there… One camp… argues that extraterrestrial life is abundant… The other camp… maintains that while life may exist on other planets, the odds of there being extraterrestrial INTELLIGENCE are so small that we are almost certainly alone … in the entire observable universe.” (Pg. 292-293)
Of the Anthropic Principle, he notes, “it raises two difficulties. First, it requires that we set the constants of nature and other facts about the universe against an infinite field of all other possible values---and this makes it next to impossible to calculate the odds of things coming out as they are. The other problem is … [that the] anthropic principle limits acceptable cosmological theories to those that take human existence into account.” (Pg. 299)
He concludes, “we are left with… a situation in which we would clearly be better off is we left God out of cosmology altogether. The origin of the universe and of the constants of nature is a mystery, and may forever reman so. But to assign to God the job of doing everything we don’t (yet) understand is to abuse the concept of God… More appropriate, I should think, is the view that God created the universe out of an interest in spontaneous creativity---that he wanted nature to produce surprise phenomena that he himself could not have foreseen… in a creative universe God would betray no trace of his presence… Whether he left of was ever here I do not know, and don’t believe we ever shall know.” (Pg. 310-312)
This is a well-written and stimulating book, that will interest those studying the ‘big ideas’ of modern science.
Science writer Timothy Ferris wrote in the first chapter of this 1997 book, “This book will summarize what we know about the cosmos and how we know it, and will speculate about the directions cosmology may take in the future. We need first to outline how science arrived at its present understanding of the age, scale, and evolution of the universe.” (Pg. 23)
He explains, “In quantum physics, space is not empty but is roiling with ‘virtual’ particles---ghostly particles that normally exist for but a moment, constantly boiling up out of the vacuum, splitting up, then recombining and subsiding away again… In flat space, virtual particles cannot long survive: They exist by borrowing energy from the vacuum, and normally such energy is in short supply. But the steeply curved spacetime at the black hole event horizon contains enormous amounts of TIDAL energy. This tidal energy is gravitational in origin. It arises from the difference in gravitational force exerted between two points at different distances from the black hole… virtual particles … can be promoted from virtual (i.e., short-lived) to ‘real’ (meaning permanent) particles… one of the newly promoted particles may fall into the black hole while the other escapes. As a result, the black hole is continually radiating particles, and thereby losing mass.” (Pg. 97-98)
He explains, “Their putative ability to transport space travelers millions of light years in an instant has made wormholes a feature of science fiction novels whose plots demand an intergalactic rapid-transit system. In practice… many difficulties would beset a wormhole cosmonaut. First, nobody knows where wormholes exist… Second, a cosmonaut might not survive a wormhole passage… Third, it’s not clear that a wormhole, if one did pop up, would stay open long enough for anyone to jump into it… Nevertheless, if black holes have taught science anything it is that one should not reject a promising idea solely because it leads to bizarre conclusions… Kip Thorne proposed that it might be possible to hold wormholes open… [if we] thread the wormhole with ‘exotic’ material. This is a theoretical form of matter … Thorne speculated that an advanced civilization might be able to gather or manufacture exotic material and use it to open up wormholes for travel… The Thorne conjecture raised the possibility that wormholes could be used as time machines, capable of transporting wormhole travelers … into the past… Traveling into the past of one’s own universe violates causality and thus creates severe paradoxes… and many physicists believe time travel to be literally impossible.” (Pg. 100-101)
He states, “On the terrestrial level, MASSIVE EXTINCTIONS… punctuate the fossil record… One of the … best-studied … occasioned the break between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs and most of their contemporaries suddenly expired… Such catastrophes … [are] clearing the way for the emergence of new species that would otherwise have had little chance of displacing senior life-forms … As we descended from … a little lemurlike creature that cowered in trees as the dinosaurs thundered by---we may owe our existence to the comet that made a mess of things 65,000 millennia ago.” (Pg. 175-176)
He addresses ‘Creative Evolution,’ which “mean[s] that evolution is genuinely innovative---that its products cannot be predicted in detail… The concept of creative evolution cannot be confirmed empirically… So creative evolution apparently does reside beyond the purview of science. It is, in short, a philosophical notion, not a scientific one. As such it is readily dismissed… But those who prefer to entertain the whole rainbow of human thought… may wish to give the doctrine of creative evolution a fair hearing.” (Pg. 195-196)
He acknowledges, “Twenty years ago, the tools that promised to dig the deepest went by the rather hyperbolic name of grand unified theories, of GUTs. They were all the rage… The idea was that … early in the first second of time, there were not three forces but one… the right GUT … would show how this force operated, thus providing a unified account of all the forces other than gravity. Alas, this pregnant idea... hasn’t worked out terribly well…” (Pg. 217)
Turning to string theory, he reports, “Skeptics view string sophistication as a liability, its higher math a castle destined to remain floating in thin air. String theory, they complain, is in many ways more complicated than the old physics it purports to replace---and it cannot yet even specify the old models… Hopefully both routes will converge at the same apex---a theory that combines curved space and the quantum principle, depicting particles as strings and thus as shards of space.” (Pg. 225-227)
He suggests, “inflation seems a good bet to become part of the standard big bang cosmology… It offers adept explanations of why the universe is isotropic and homogeneous… and how galaxies came into being… It has already made two testable predictions… And always important in science as in art, the inflationary hypothesis … raises new and intriguing avenues of inquiry.” (Pg. 241-242)
He explains that Andrei Linde suggests that “If… the bubble of which our observable universe constitutes a small part is but one among many bubbles that continue to nucleate more bubbles as they go, then it is pointless to inquire which was the ‘original’ bubble. Each bubble owes its birth to another bubble, which came from another bubble, and so on.” (Pg. 263)
He asserts, “This is quantum weirdness: Interfering with one part of a quantum system alters the results observed in another part, even when the system has been enlarged to enormous dimensions…quantum systems are said to exhibit NONLOCALITY. They act like an intimately connected whole, regardless of whether their parts are far removed from each other… Three explanations for it … have emerged. The first, the ‘Copenhagen interpretation,’ asserts that … we cannot know the state of a quantum system until it is measured… The second, or ‘many worlds’ interpretation, begins with the astounding premise that the entire universe splits, with each act of measurement, into two universes, in one of which the particle has the qualities we measure and in the other of which it resolves itself into another potential state… The third interpretation … portrays quantum systems as mechanically linked… They are said to accomplish this by means of a ‘guiding wave’ that has not yet been observed.” (Pg. 269-271)
He continues, “The Copenhagen interpretation … declares that … The act of measurement turns potentiality into actuality, resolving the question of what the particle actually ‘is’… So the Copenhagen interpretation implicates the observer in what he or she observes. Observers cannot arbitrarily alter reality… but they can make of a photon either wave or particle.” (Pg. 272-273) He goes on, “The magic carpet of the Copenhagen interpretation is the act of observation. It is by making an observation … that one ‘collapses the wave function,’ thus resolving the superposed system into one or the other of its states.” (Pg. 276)
He expands on the ‘many worlds’ interpretation which makes “a genuinely flabbergasting supposition: It states that the universe is constantly splitting apart, making copies of itself that are identical except for the outcome of each particular observation. Each time a physicist checks to see whether a photon is a particle or a wave, the universe divides, creating two laboratories containing two physicists, one of whom sees a particle and the other a wave… This notion is certainly sufficiently bold to satisfy [Niels] Bohr’s demand that new ideas be ‘crazy enough’ to contribute to quantum theory…” (Pg. 278-279)
Could the universe be a hologram, as David Bohm (and others) have suggested? “I don’t know how to frame such a concept in contemporary scientific terms, so I won’t try. Such difficulties may… be a signal that there is no ‘implicate’ side to the universe---that this line of thought is just hot air. But they might also mean that, as Bohm believed, we are indeed dealing with a new ‘order,’ which must therefore evolve its own concepts and language and cannot properly be analyzed…” (Pg. 287)
He explains, ‘The question of whether we are alone in the universe is ancient. What’s new is that we are coming to possess tools that could give us a shot at answering it. Existing radio telescopes are capable of detecting signals transmitted by an alien civilization… anywhere in our quarter of the Milky Way galaxy… theorizing has produced two sharply different estimations of whether there is life out there… One camp… argues that extraterrestrial life is abundant… The other camp… maintains that while life may exist on other planets, the odds of there being extraterrestrial INTELLIGENCE are so small that we are almost certainly alone … in the entire observable universe.” (Pg. 292-293)
Of the Anthropic Principle, he notes, “it raises two difficulties. First, it requires that we set the constants of nature and other facts about the universe against an infinite field of all other possible values---and this makes it next to impossible to calculate the odds of things coming out as they are. The other problem is … [that the] anthropic principle limits acceptable cosmological theories to those that take human existence into account.” (Pg. 299)
He concludes, “we are left with… a situation in which we would clearly be better off is we left God out of cosmology altogether. The origin of the universe and of the constants of nature is a mystery, and may forever reman so. But to assign to God the job of doing everything we don’t (yet) understand is to abuse the concept of God… More appropriate, I should think, is the view that God created the universe out of an interest in spontaneous creativity---that he wanted nature to produce surprise phenomena that he himself could not have foreseen… in a creative universe God would betray no trace of his presence… Whether he left of was ever here I do not know, and don’t believe we ever shall know.” (Pg. 310-312)
This is a well-written and stimulating book, that will interest those studying the ‘big ideas’ of modern science.
August 4, 2020
Ferris' book on cosmology is well written, well sourced, and engaging...but it definitely suffers in a few big ways. First, it's about twenty years out of date, so quite a bit has changed. I knew this going in, and figured it would be fun to see how expectation vs reality would turn out. Unfortunately, the books later chapters, which cover the speculative predictions, are the weakest aspects of the book. At least Michio Kaku's books are daring in their speculation, even if his predictions wind up pretty far afield.
Next, while a great overview, it doesn't cover the material in a ton of depth. In fact, it felt a bit like John Gribbin's The Scientists, or Bill Bryson's A Short History of nearly everything. It mostly details the development of cosmology and high-energy physics via biography. At least those other books covered a wider field.
At the end of the day, it's a fun read, but I didn't come away feeling that my understanding of the material had deepened or that the book had given me new ideas to explore. On the otherhand, as a laymen's popularization of the field, it's perhaps a touch too specific. Winds up being stuck in the middle.
Next, while a great overview, it doesn't cover the material in a ton of depth. In fact, it felt a bit like John Gribbin's The Scientists, or Bill Bryson's A Short History of nearly everything. It mostly details the development of cosmology and high-energy physics via biography. At least those other books covered a wider field.
At the end of the day, it's a fun read, but I didn't come away feeling that my understanding of the material had deepened or that the book had given me new ideas to explore. On the otherhand, as a laymen's popularization of the field, it's perhaps a touch too specific. Winds up being stuck in the middle.
October 15, 2020
- "The cosmologist is like William Blake's builder of a ladder to the stars. "I want! I want!" he cries, but there's nothing to hold up the top of the ladder, and he's not too sure about who's holding the bottom either. Who are we and what we do we want? Cosmology like every other human endeavor comes back to us in the end. but it's not just about us. That's the beauty of it - that we return from the voyage altered. Galaxies, like sea coral, work a sea change, and make of us something rich and strange. T S Elliot wrote:
We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
If this poem ended with the third line, it would rank among the dreariest of modern times. Science is too much trouble if it's point is to bring us where it started. But the fourth line is cosmology's credo. For to find our place, we must know the place, cellar to ceiling, from the taproots to the stars, the whole shebang."
The book is a general overview of cosmology during the end of the twentieth century. Keep in mind, twenty years later now, some concepts are outdated and some predictions unfortunately do not come to fruition, but I would still recommend this book to any amateur astronomer and space enthusiast. Timothy Ferris takes on you on a lively trip throughout the (supposed) universe and points out the vista points in the most poetic manner. As with Earth, there is a massive difference to touring a place to living in the place, this book too is a generalization to be understood and appreciated by all, without getting into the nitty gritty maths behind it all.
We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
If this poem ended with the third line, it would rank among the dreariest of modern times. Science is too much trouble if it's point is to bring us where it started. But the fourth line is cosmology's credo. For to find our place, we must know the place, cellar to ceiling, from the taproots to the stars, the whole shebang."
The book is a general overview of cosmology during the end of the twentieth century. Keep in mind, twenty years later now, some concepts are outdated and some predictions unfortunately do not come to fruition, but I would still recommend this book to any amateur astronomer and space enthusiast. Timothy Ferris takes on you on a lively trip throughout the (supposed) universe and points out the vista points in the most poetic manner. As with Earth, there is a massive difference to touring a place to living in the place, this book too is a generalization to be understood and appreciated by all, without getting into the nitty gritty maths behind it all.
March 11, 2009
Timothy Ferris's enthusiasm for space is infective. In Seeing in the Dark he wrote about his love of astronomy (and many others who share his love of it). In The Whole Shebang he tries to tackle the current state of our knowledge of life, the universe and everything. The title is also a delicious pun on the "big bang" and he has things to say about it too.
The Whole Shebang looks like a hefty book at first at 400 pages, but the last hundred are devoted to the end notes and bibliography. The remaining 300 pages is divided into 12 chapters that cover many of the different ways of thinking about the universe: how it expands, how it is shaped, the big bang and the evidence we have for it, dark matter, the structure of the universe, the evolution of stars and other bodies in space, and chapters on quantum physics (but presented in Ferris's engaging and easy to follow manner) and finally where we fit into all of this.
I enjoyed The Whole Shebang more than I did Seeing in the Dark because there is less focus on Ferris's interviews with other experts in the field. The Whole Shebang instead sticks with the topic and only glances at the people responsible for advancing our understanding of space and the universe. I came to this book with a layman's basic understanding of the science in the book and so found it a relatively quick read giving the complexity of the subject. Others who aren't as familiar with the subject might want to take it in smaller chunks than I did but I think it will still be an interesting and understandable book.
The Whole Shebang looks like a hefty book at first at 400 pages, but the last hundred are devoted to the end notes and bibliography. The remaining 300 pages is divided into 12 chapters that cover many of the different ways of thinking about the universe: how it expands, how it is shaped, the big bang and the evidence we have for it, dark matter, the structure of the universe, the evolution of stars and other bodies in space, and chapters on quantum physics (but presented in Ferris's engaging and easy to follow manner) and finally where we fit into all of this.
I enjoyed The Whole Shebang more than I did Seeing in the Dark because there is less focus on Ferris's interviews with other experts in the field. The Whole Shebang instead sticks with the topic and only glances at the people responsible for advancing our understanding of space and the universe. I came to this book with a layman's basic understanding of the science in the book and so found it a relatively quick read giving the complexity of the subject. Others who aren't as familiar with the subject might want to take it in smaller chunks than I did but I think it will still be an interesting and understandable book.
October 28, 2015
I am fascinated by science.
I went to a Baptist school where the entirety of the science curriculum can be summarized to a word: God.
The benefit of this is that The Mystic is tied into the universe, the cost is that there isn't much depth. Couple this with the fact that the only good science teacher in the school had a student teacher the semester I had the class, I didn't learn too much. I had an Astronomy class in college that was taught by a recognized genius; his skills extended to the application of science only. To pass the test with a C, after the curve, you needed only a 28%.
To make up for this, I've been taking a tour of science books; Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything was the start. Recommended was The Whole Shebang, which does an awesome job of explaining the Cosmos and Cosmology. Though I don't pretend to understand it all, I do think I could explain the concept of a black hole. It also does a great job of poetically walking you through the biggest of sciences.
I recommend the book. I think it was published in the late 90's, so I'm excited to see how the field has developed.
I recommend this book.
I went to a Baptist school where the entirety of the science curriculum can be summarized to a word: God.
The benefit of this is that The Mystic is tied into the universe, the cost is that there isn't much depth. Couple this with the fact that the only good science teacher in the school had a student teacher the semester I had the class, I didn't learn too much. I had an Astronomy class in college that was taught by a recognized genius; his skills extended to the application of science only. To pass the test with a C, after the curve, you needed only a 28%.
To make up for this, I've been taking a tour of science books; Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything was the start. Recommended was The Whole Shebang, which does an awesome job of explaining the Cosmos and Cosmology. Though I don't pretend to understand it all, I do think I could explain the concept of a black hole. It also does a great job of poetically walking you through the biggest of sciences.
I recommend the book. I think it was published in the late 90's, so I'm excited to see how the field has developed.
I recommend this book.
July 2, 2020
I’m always looking for understandable books about the cosmos, and I was excited to dive into this one. The recommendations on the back cover were glowing: Takes readers on an incredible journey from the big bang to the whole shebang . . . his erudition is brightly lit, reader friendly, and at all times provocative . . . few literary figures know the cosmos as well as he does, or explain its technical details so clearly. So I was expecting this book to be, of all things, clear. But I found myself reading some sentences two or three times without understanding them at all. Sometimes I found whole paragraphs completely incomprehensible. Then I started wondering if Timothy Ferris himself understood what he was talking about. Come to find out, he isn’t even a scientist. His undergraduate majors were English and communications, and after one year of law school, he became a journalist. And he’s writing about the cosmos? I’m sure there are better books out there, and I’ll keep looking for them.
August 21, 2015
Just finished the book. I think I learned more from this book than from any that I can think of, in recent memory.
Marvelous book. Mr Ferris' writing style makes what could be a very dry book into smooth and enjoyable reading. I was far behind in knowing what the current thinking in modern physics was, and I like to keep up, but had only picked up bits and pieces here and there from Quantum Mechanics and so forth.
I do realize that the book was published in 1997, so it only caught me up to there. So I'm hoping that the author will write another book bringing us up to 2015, in a similarly palatable style. And this book, as I say did catch me up in a comprehensive way much further than I had been.
Marvelous book. Mr Ferris' writing style makes what could be a very dry book into smooth and enjoyable reading. I was far behind in knowing what the current thinking in modern physics was, and I like to keep up, but had only picked up bits and pieces here and there from Quantum Mechanics and so forth.
I do realize that the book was published in 1997, so it only caught me up to there. So I'm hoping that the author will write another book bringing us up to 2015, in a similarly palatable style. And this book, as I say did catch me up in a comprehensive way much further than I had been.
August 5, 2009
Excellent primer on cosmology written for the layperson. If you want to know about our place in the Universe, read this book. I found his descriptions of the structure of the Universe fascinating. From our planet to the solar system, our galaxy, our group, so on and so forth it was incredible. He also explains how scientists know answers to questions about the age of the universe, how far stars are from us, etc.
I can't recommend it enough.
I can't recommend it enough.
November 27, 2012
The five stars for this book is how I felt about it when it came out. Surely the sharp end of its cutting edge haas dulled as scientific progress has marched on, but that's true of all non-fiction books. This one helped me grasp the history of the universe since the big bang though and that's a vital perspective to have on one's place in the world. There might be something better out there now, but I doubt if you'd go wrong reading this at any time.
October 27, 2021
Otra obra maestra de Ferris, tras su Aventura del UniversoEn este libro, en vez de recorrer la historia desde que empezamos a levantar la vista al cielo nocturno como homínidos, nos lo cuenta todo desde el presente. Un paseo por el borde que separa la ciencia del desconocimiento. Muy entretenido, muy interesante, muy bien explicado.
April 8, 2007
really well written and entertaining. i like that there is a notes section in the end with the math and formulae instead of scattered throughout the book. it made the book less intimidating while providing a good starting point for further investigation into the nuts and bolts behind the science.
August 17, 2014
It was a good read. It is a tough read, but he explains very complex ideas in pretty clear language. I’m glad I read it. The author treats the reader with great respect, by not dumbing things down - but by explaining things in a way that make sense.
April 6, 2014
More readable than most books on the Big Bang and related topics and very poignant, given his spin on inflationary theory that was recently proven. :) A great intro to understanding the significance of that and the recent detection of the Higgs boson.
November 8, 2019
Excellent book on cosmology. Helped answer a lot of questions and clear up a lot of misconceptions I had about all the different and confusing theories in physics. The author navigates complicated subjects while presenting non-biased arguments for and against complicated topics.
March 21, 2008
Just a wonderful, mind-bending book about what an incredible universe we live in. I loved this book and now wish I had taken more physics courses in college.
August 23, 2008
A great primer on cosmology.
March 6, 2014
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 17, 2013
This book is mind-blowing.
December 8, 2019
"As such surveys [e.g., the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or the survey that uncovered the Geller-Huchra wedge] continue, it's possible that even larger levels of hierarchy will be found. Certainly nature displays a self-similarity on many spatial scales. As the physicist Philip Morrison or MIT points out, if we span the universe from nuclear to intergalactic dimensions, we encounter a two-beat rhythm: Areas of emptiness - the voids between the nucleus and the electron shell of the atom, between stars and their planets, between galaxy clusters and voids, and so forth - are interspersed with high-density regions, like atomic nuclei, molecules in crystals, and galaxy clusters and walls."
July 9, 2020
I picked this up in a used book store a few months ago and I am glad that I did. There has been a lot going on in cosmology since The Whole Shebang was published in 1997, but it is still good science writing.
March 11, 2019
I read to page 82 of 312.
December 29, 2023
I skimmed it. It's from 97. Find something newer.
September 5, 2025
The Bill Bryson of cosmology
June 15, 2016
This book, a survey of cosmology, the whole shebang, written for a general audience, may be twenty years old and somewhat dated, but I found it to be enlightening and easy to read. In other words, Mr. Ferris did a good job with this book. His discussions about quantum weirdness whetted my appetite for quantum mechanics, and I can see more reading on that topic in my future.
One thing I appreciate about Mr. Ferris' writing style is his ability to frame details within the context of the big picture. When I was an undergraduate nuclear engineering student, I had to take a nuclear physics class. Two decades have passed since then, and I have forgotten a lot of the details, but I remember learning about a variety of subatomic particles and performing a variety of special relativity calculations. Given my major, it was important to understand these topics, but I don't remember any discussion about how the different concepts fit together or what general relativity was all about. I didn't get to learn the forest before studying the trees. Thanks to Mr. Ferris, I have an understanding of general relativity that I never got from a college level nuclear physics class.
In his discussion of various theories of inflation, I noticed an absence of dogmatism regarding competing frameworks and even some degree of frustration. Some frameworks start with assumed initial conditions that exclude other possibilities. What is the basis? SWAG? A framework that attempts to avoid these pitfalls, chaotic inflation, which dispenses with initial conditions, has its own problems, like a need for a predecessor universe to start the process. Of course, the predecessor universe would also need its own predecessor universe, and so on, and on and on . . . In other words, I appreciated Mr. Ferris' candor with regards to the problems inflation, especially given that I have questions of my own. My engineer brain wants to know mechanism, what caused rapid inflation to suddenly start and suddenly slow down. Perhaps the cosmologists just don't know. Is there some other explanation that they cannot or will not consider?
Finally, I found the "Contrarian Theological Afterward" to be more balanced than I expected when I saw the title in the table of contents. I just happen to be a Christian, a theist, and a creationist and am accustomed to seeing creationists and intelligent design proponents dismissed out of hand by scientists and science aficionados as unscientific and anti-science, their concerns ignored. Mr. Ferris is doubtless an agnostic or an atheist. In this afterward, he methodically critiqued the cosmological, ontological and design arguments used by Christian apologists and exposed a number of weak points while also noting that many arguments trumpeted by atheists as proof of God's nonexistence have their own weak points. This seemed intellectually honest, and I appreciated it.
I am glad to have read Mr. Ferris' critique of the Christian arguments because it is important to understand one's strengths and weaknesses. That said, I think his critique of the design argument employed a subtle logical fallacy. In this critique, he considers
"the question of whether God had free will when He created the universe. If so, he was free to make the universe in a random, haphazard way. But if the universe is random, what need have we to postulate the existence of God? And if it is not - if, say, God could have made the universe only the most reasonable way, or in a way that promoted human existence - then God cannot be all powerful."
In making logical arguments, it is vital to maintain consistency of definition from start to finish, and I think object of "free will" is in play. God had two free will choices:
1. Create man (yes/no)
2. Make a universe suitable for human existence (yes/no)
If I choose to travel to a destination, and there is only one way to get there, does this constraint prove that I lack free will? I don't think so! I am free to chose to go or not to go. So, why does the need for a fine tuned universe take free will from God, who is still free to chose to create man or not to do so?
This issue notwithstanding, I enjoyed the book and recommend it, especially to Christians and creationists. I may be a committed creationist but consider it important to understand all sides of the issues. Also, some Christian creationists can be just as smug and arrogant in their positions as Richard Dawkins and company. If it takes an agnostic or atheist to remind them that "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble," so be it.
One thing I appreciate about Mr. Ferris' writing style is his ability to frame details within the context of the big picture. When I was an undergraduate nuclear engineering student, I had to take a nuclear physics class. Two decades have passed since then, and I have forgotten a lot of the details, but I remember learning about a variety of subatomic particles and performing a variety of special relativity calculations. Given my major, it was important to understand these topics, but I don't remember any discussion about how the different concepts fit together or what general relativity was all about. I didn't get to learn the forest before studying the trees. Thanks to Mr. Ferris, I have an understanding of general relativity that I never got from a college level nuclear physics class.
In his discussion of various theories of inflation, I noticed an absence of dogmatism regarding competing frameworks and even some degree of frustration. Some frameworks start with assumed initial conditions that exclude other possibilities. What is the basis? SWAG? A framework that attempts to avoid these pitfalls, chaotic inflation, which dispenses with initial conditions, has its own problems, like a need for a predecessor universe to start the process. Of course, the predecessor universe would also need its own predecessor universe, and so on, and on and on . . . In other words, I appreciated Mr. Ferris' candor with regards to the problems inflation, especially given that I have questions of my own. My engineer brain wants to know mechanism, what caused rapid inflation to suddenly start and suddenly slow down. Perhaps the cosmologists just don't know. Is there some other explanation that they cannot or will not consider?
Finally, I found the "Contrarian Theological Afterward" to be more balanced than I expected when I saw the title in the table of contents. I just happen to be a Christian, a theist, and a creationist and am accustomed to seeing creationists and intelligent design proponents dismissed out of hand by scientists and science aficionados as unscientific and anti-science, their concerns ignored. Mr. Ferris is doubtless an agnostic or an atheist. In this afterward, he methodically critiqued the cosmological, ontological and design arguments used by Christian apologists and exposed a number of weak points while also noting that many arguments trumpeted by atheists as proof of God's nonexistence have their own weak points. This seemed intellectually honest, and I appreciated it.
I am glad to have read Mr. Ferris' critique of the Christian arguments because it is important to understand one's strengths and weaknesses. That said, I think his critique of the design argument employed a subtle logical fallacy. In this critique, he considers
"the question of whether God had free will when He created the universe. If so, he was free to make the universe in a random, haphazard way. But if the universe is random, what need have we to postulate the existence of God? And if it is not - if, say, God could have made the universe only the most reasonable way, or in a way that promoted human existence - then God cannot be all powerful."
In making logical arguments, it is vital to maintain consistency of definition from start to finish, and I think object of "free will" is in play. God had two free will choices:
1. Create man (yes/no)
2. Make a universe suitable for human existence (yes/no)
If I choose to travel to a destination, and there is only one way to get there, does this constraint prove that I lack free will? I don't think so! I am free to chose to go or not to go. So, why does the need for a fine tuned universe take free will from God, who is still free to chose to create man or not to do so?
This issue notwithstanding, I enjoyed the book and recommend it, especially to Christians and creationists. I may be a committed creationist but consider it important to understand all sides of the issues. Also, some Christian creationists can be just as smug and arrogant in their positions as Richard Dawkins and company. If it takes an agnostic or atheist to remind them that "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble," so be it.
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