On Being
A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence
ISBN13: 9780199603367ISBN10: 0199603367
Hardback,
152 pages
Apr 2011,
In Stock
Price:
$19.95 (02)Description
Peter Atkins is the shining exception to the rule that scientists make poor writers. A Fellow at Oxford and a leading chemist, he has won admiration for his precise, lucid, and yet rigorous explanations of science. Now he turns to the greatest--and most controversial--questions of human existence. Can the scientific method tell us anything of value about birth, death, the origin of reality--and its end? Are these questions best left to faith?In On Being, Atkins makes a provocative contribution to the great debate between religion and science. Atkins makes his position clear from the very first sentence: "The scientific method can shed light on every and any concept, even those that have troubled humans since the earliest stirrings of consciousness," he writes. He takes a materialist approach to the great questions of being that have inspired myth and religion, seeking to "dispel their mystery without diminishing their grandeur." In placing scientific knowledge in such cosmic perspective, he takes us on an often dizzying tour of existence. For example, he argues that "the substrate of existence is nothing at all." The total electrical charge of the universe, among other things, must be nothing--zero--he writes, or else the universe would have blasted itself apart. "Charge was not created at the creation: electrical Nothing separated into equal and opposite charges." He explores breathtaking questions--asking the purpose of the universe--with wit and learning, touching on Sanskrit scriptures and John Updike along the way.
"If absolutely and unreservedly everything is an aspect of the physical, material world, then I do not see how it can be closed to scientific investigation," Atkins writes. "The scientific method is the only means of discovering the nature of reality."
Features
- A personal statement of belief from renowned author Peter Atkins about the ability of science
- Each chapter explores a grand theme, such as Origins or Death, to show what science has revealed about the topic
- Written with wit, irony, elegance, and a rigorous exposition of science
- Explores issues such as the significance of evolution, our personal origins, the physiology of death, and the far ends of the Universe
About the Author(s)
Peter Atkins is Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford. A leading chemist and writer of widely adopted textbooks, he is the author of Galileo's Finger and Four Laws, among other works.
