Download or read book Probable Impossibilities written by Alan Lightman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.

Download or read book The Summer of Impossibilities written by Rachael Allen and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four girls. One summer. And a pact to do the impossible. Skyler, Ellie, Scarlett, and Amelia Grace are forced to spend the summer at the lake house where their moms became best friends. One can’t wait. One would rather gnaw off her own arm than hang out with a bunch of strangers just so their moms can drink too much wine and sing Journey at two o'clock in the morning. Two are sisters. Three are currently feuding with their mothers. One is hiding how bad her joint pain has gotten. All of them are hiding something. One falls in love with a boy she thought she despised. One almost sets her crush on fire with a flaming marshmallow. One has a crush that could change everything. None of them are the same at the end of the summer.

Download or read book Ken Krenzel s Relaxed Impossibilities written by Stephen Minch and published by . This book was released on 2009-09 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy written by Harry Lehmann and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-23 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifth Factor X publication from the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA), The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy provides an overview of the limits to the circular economy, emphasising the relationship between integrated resource use and more systemic leadership-management approaches. On a European level, the book ties into the recent European Green Deal and aims to empower actors across sectors and EU member countries to transition from existing linear models of value capture and expression to more systemic-circular solutions of value capture and expression. The volume provides a hands-on contribution towards building the knowledge and skill sets of current and future decision-makers who face these complex-systemic crises in their day-to-day business. The book further provides access to best practices from cutting-edge research and development findings, which will empower decision-makers to develop a more sustainable and equitable economy. Providing solutions for a more sustainable economy, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of natural resource use, sustainable business, environmental economics and sustainable development, as well as decision-makers and experts from the fields of policy development, industry and civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non Commercial- No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Download or read book Thinking Impossibilities written by University of California, Los Angeles. Center for 17th- & 18th- Century Studies and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intellectuals rarely make a significant impact on one field of scholarship let alone several, yet Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) displayed an intellectual range that encompassed several disciplines and broke new ground across seemingly impenetrable scholarly boundaries. The philosophy of history from antiquity to modernity, medieval and early modern history of science, medieval scholasticism, Jewish history in all of its periods - these are all areas in which he made lasting contributions. Thinking Impossibilities brings together Funkenstein's colleagues, friends, and former students to engage with important aspects of his intellectual legacy. Funkenstein's diverse interests were bound together by common figures of thought, especially the search for pre-modern intellectual groundings of modern ideas and how the seeming 'impossibilities' of one historical moment might become positive resources of conceptual construction and development in another. The essays in this volume take up major themes in European intellectual history, and examine them through the unique lens that Funkenstein himself employed during his career. Of particular interest are ways in which topics of Jewish history are engaged with the larger field of the history of ideas in the West. Richly interdisciplinary and full of fresh insights, Thinking Impossibilities is a fitting tribute to an important twentieth-century scholar.

Download or read book Abstract Algebra and Famous Impossibilities written by Sidney A. Morris and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-26 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook develops the abstract algebra necessary to prove the impossibility of four famous mathematical feats: squaring the circle, trisecting the angle, doubling the cube, and solving quintic equations. All the relevant concepts about fields are introduced concretely, with the geometrical questions providing motivation for the algebraic concepts. By focusing on problems that are as easy to approach as they were fiendishly difficult to resolve, the authors provide a uniquely accessible introduction to the power of abstraction. Beginning with a brief account of the history of these fabled problems, the book goes on to present the theory of fields, polynomials, field extensions, and irreducible polynomials. Straightedge and compass constructions establish the standards for constructability, and offer a glimpse into why squaring, doubling, and trisecting appeared so tractable to professional and amateur mathematicians alike. However, the connection between geometry and algebra allows the reader to bypass two millennia of failed geometric attempts, arriving at the elegant algebraic conclusion that such constructions are impossible. From here, focus turns to a challenging problem within algebra itself: finding a general formula for solving a quintic polynomial. The proof of the impossibility of this task is presented using Abel’s original approach. Abstract Algebra and Famous Impossibilities illustrates the enormous power of algebraic abstraction by exploring several notable historical triumphs. This new edition adds the fourth impossibility: solving general quintic equations. Students and instructors alike will appreciate the illuminating examples, conversational commentary, and engaging exercises that accompany each section. A first course in linear algebra is assumed, along with a basic familiarity with integral calculus.

Download or read book Abstract Algebra and Famous Impossibilities written by Arthur Jones and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The famous problems of squaring the circle, doubling the cube and trisecting an angle captured the imagination of both professional and amateur mathematicians for over two thousand years. Despite the enormous effort and ingenious attempts by these men and women, the problems would not yield to purely geometrical methods. It was only the development. of abstract algebra in the nineteenth century which enabled mathematicians to arrive at the surprising conclusion that these constructions are not possible. In this book we develop enough abstract algebra to prove that these constructions are impossible. Our approach introduces all the relevant concepts about fields in a way which is more concrete than usual and which avoids the use of quotient structures (and even of the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two polynomials). Having the geometrical questions as a specific goal provides motivation for the introduction of the algebraic concepts and we have found that students respond very favourably. We have used this text to teach second-year students at La Trobe University over a period of many years, each time refining the material in the light of student performance.

Download or read book Walking Through Walls and Other Impossibilities written by Milton E Brener and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of the aliens among us is not the study of Earth for purely academic purposes. It is something more vital to the aliens and more portentous for us. The picture that emerges from much research makes sense of several aspects of the alien presence, previously quite puzzling. They apparently are a dying race inhabiting a dying planet. They have undoubtedly mastered physical forces and phenomena of which we have not even dreamed. But it has come at a terrible cost. Their emotional life has been all but lost, existing only as a faint remnant from a long distant past. They may pity our hopelessly primitive technology, but they envy us our robust emotional life. Like all living things everywhere they live for the perpetuation of their genes. They do not hate us, nor do they seek our destruction. They seek to create a race of hybrids, combining their scientifically superior minds with our rich emotional makeup. The ridicule of the entire subject by the government and other forces, fearful of upheaval in our society, has aggravated the suffering of those chosen and victimized by the aliens, who apparently seek, ineptly sometimes, to minimize it. "The author combines this scholarly approach with an almost folksy narrative style to make Walking Through Walls a very readable and approachable treatise on the phenomena... as good as any book on the subject and far more skillfully written than most, including those Brener has referenced most frequently, Bud Hopkins' Intruders and Philip Corso's The Day after Roswell." -Blue Ink Review

Download or read book Thinking Impossibilities written by Robert S. Westman and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2008-05-24 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intellectuals rarely make a significant impact on one field of scholarship let alone several, yet Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) displayed an intellectual range that encompassed several disciplines and broke new ground across seemingly impenetrable scholarly boundaries. The philosophy of history from antiquity to modernity, medieval and early modern history of science, medieval scholasticism, Jewish history in all of its periods - these are all areas in which he made lasting contributions. Thinking Impossibilities brings together Funkenstein's colleagues, friends, and former students to engage with important aspects of his intellectual legacy. Funkenstein's diverse interests were bound together by common figures of thought, especially the search for pre-modern intellectual groundings of modern ideas and how the seeming 'impossibilities' of one historical moment might become positive resources of conceptual construction and development in another. The essays in this volume take up major themes in European intellectual history, and examine them through the unique lens that Funkenstein himself employed during his career. Of particular interest are ways in which topics of Jewish history are engaged with the larger field of the history of ideas in the West. Richly interdisciplinary and full of fresh insights, Thinking Impossibilities is a fitting tribute to an important twentieth-century scholar.

Download or read book The Impossibility of Religious Freedom written by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground. Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains. A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution. Featuring a new preface by the author, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society.

Download or read book Time Travel written by Nikk Effingham and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are various arguments for the metaphysical impossibility of time travel. Is it impossible because objects could then be in two places at once? Or is it impossible because some objects could bring about their own existence? In this book, Nikk Effingham contends that no such argument is sound and that time travel is metaphysically possible. His main focus is on the Grandfather Paradox: the position that time travel is impossible because someone could not go back in time and kill their own grandfather before he met their grandmother. In such a case, Effingham argues that the time traveller would have the ability to do the impossible (so they could kill their grandfather) even though those impossibilities will never come about (so they won't kill their grandfather). He then explores the ramifications of this view, discussing issues in probability and decision theory. The book ends by laying out the dangers of time travel and why, even though no time machines currently exist, we should pay extra special care ensuring that nothing, no matter how small or microscopic, ever travels in time.

Download or read book The Hard Stuff written by Wayne Kramer and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first memoir by Wayne Kramer, legendary guitarist and cofounder of quintessential Detroit proto-punk legends The MC5 "Voyeuristically dramatic." -THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW In January 1969, before the world heard a note of their music, the MC5 was on the cover of Rolling Stone. Led by legendary guitarist Wayne Kramer, the band was a reflection of the times: exciting, sexy, violent, chaotic, and even out of control. The missing link between free jazz and punk rock, the MC5 toured the country, played alongside music legends, and had a rabid following, their music acting as the soundtrack to the blossoming blue collar youth movement. Kramer wanted to redefine what a rock 'n' roll group was capable of, and though there was power in reaching for that, it was also a recipe for personal and professional disaster. The band recorded three major label albums but, by 1972-it was all over. Kramer's story is (literally) a revolutionary one, but it's also the deeply personal struggle of an addict and an artist, a rebel with a great tale to tell. From the glory days of Detroit to the junk-sick streets of the East Village, from Key West to Nashville and sunny L.A., in and out of prison and on and off of drugs, Kramer's is the classic journeyman narrative, but with a twist: he's here to remind us that revolution is always an option.

Download or read book Tales of Impossibility written by David S. Richeson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive look at four of the most famous problems in mathematics Tales of Impossibility recounts the intriguing story of the renowned problems of antiquity, four of the most famous and studied questions in the history of mathematics. First posed by the ancient Greeks, these compass and straightedge problems—squaring the circle, trisecting an angle, doubling the cube, and inscribing regular polygons in a circle—have served as ever-present muses for mathematicians for more than two millennia. David Richeson follows the trail of these problems to show that ultimately their proofs—which demonstrated the impossibility of solving them using only a compass and straightedge—depended on and resulted in the growth of mathematics. Richeson investigates how celebrated luminaries, including Euclid, Archimedes, Viète, Descartes, Newton, and Gauss, labored to understand these problems and how many major mathematical discoveries were related to their explorations. Although the problems were based in geometry, their resolutions were not, and had to wait until the nineteenth century, when mathematicians had developed the theory of real and complex numbers, analytic geometry, algebra, and calculus. Pierre Wantzel, a little-known mathematician, and Ferdinand von Lindemann, through his work on pi, finally determined the problems were impossible to solve. Along the way, Richeson provides entertaining anecdotes connected to the problems, such as how the Indiana state legislature passed a bill setting an incorrect value for pi and how Leonardo da Vinci made elegant contributions in his own study of these problems. Taking readers from the classical period to the present, Tales of Impossibility chronicles how four unsolvable problems have captivated mathematical thinking for centuries.

Download or read book Physics of the Impossible written by Michio Kaku and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, the renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future. Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.

Download or read book The Impossibility of Us written by Katy Upperman and published by Swoon Reads. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told in two voices Mati, a devout Muslim from Afghanistan, and Elise, a seventeen-year-old whose brother was killed there, try to keep their budding romance secret from their families.

Download or read book Aphesis written by Treydon Lunot and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his first major work of philosophy, Treydon Lunot tackles the problem of subjectivity, closely examining the various paradoxical features, necessities, and contradictions that lie at the heart of self-consciousness. In opposition to modern and postmodern attempts to do away with the subject through the embrace of impersonal chaos and multiplicity, Lunot follows in the steps of German Idealism and its modern successors (such as Slavoj Zizek and Dieter Henrich) by asserting its centrality as the 'self-relating negative' that is radically closed off from the world. Touching on topics such as time-consciousness, the death of God, Nietzscheanism, and Christianity, Lunot journeys through various thinkers and ideas with the expressed goal of shedding light on the nature of subjectivity. After discovering that the subject is internally inconsistent, closed off from itself and the world, and that 'no one gets to heaven, ' Lunot finally poses the question: is it possible to attain salvation?

Download or read book Impossibility written by John D. Barrow and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1999 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronomer John Barrow takes an intriguing look at the limits of science, who argues that there are things that are ultimately unknowable, undoable, or unreachable.