The Meaning of Human Existence

The Meaning of Human Existence
Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2014-10-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 087140480X

New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the National Book Award (Nonfiction) How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham.

Human Reality--Who We Are and Why We Exist

Human Reality--Who We Are and Why We Exist
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Worldwide United Publishing
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2009-11
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9780978526481

Human beings have questioned their existence for as long as they have been able to ponder and reason. This text transcends fantasy and science fiction in its simple presentation of reality and leaves the reader with the most profound perspective of human existence available.

Probable Impossibilities

Probable Impossibilities
Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0593081323

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.

Who We Are and How We Got Here

Who We Are and How We Got Here
Author: David Reich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192554387

The past few years have seen a revolution in our ability to map whole genome DNA from ancient humans. With the ancient DNA revolution, combined with rapid genome mapping of present human populations, has come remarkable insights into our past. This important new data has clarified and added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up some remarkable surprises. The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations existing today are mixes of ancient ones, as well as in many cases carrying a genetic component from Neanderthals, and, in some populations, Denisovans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what the genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising ancestry. Gone are old ideas of any kind of racial 'purity', or even deep and ancient divides between peoples. Instead, we are finding a rich variety of mixtures. Reich describes the cutting-edge findings from the past few years, and also considers the sensitivities involved in tracing ancestry, with science sometimes jostling with politics and tradition. He brings an important wider message: that we should celebrate our rich diversity, and recognize that every one of us is the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of ancient peoples, which we carry as ghosts in our DNA. What will we discover next?

Biocentrism

Biocentrism
Author: Robert Lanza
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2011
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1458795179

Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world a US News and World Report cover story called him a genius and a renegade thinker, even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe. Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, toward doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universes genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around. In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe our own from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the readers ideas of life--time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal. The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.

Digital Vs Human

Digital Vs Human
Author: Richard Watson
Publisher: Scribe Us
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781947534001

From the author of the international bestseller Future Files comes the one book you need to read to prepare for the world of tomorrow. On most measures that matter, we've never had it so good. Physically, life for humankind has improved immeasurably over the last fifty years. Yet there is a crisis of progress slowly spreading across the world. Perhaps this is due to a failure of vision; in the 1960s we dreamed of flying cars and moon hotels; today what we've ended up with are status updates and cat videos. To a large degree, the history of the next fifty years will be about the relationship between people and technologies created by a tiny handful of designers and developers. These inventions will undoubtedly change our lives, but the question is, to what end? What do we want these technologies to achieve on our behalf? What are they capable of, and -- as they transform the media, the economy, healthcare, education, work, and the home -- what kind of lives do we want to lead? Richard Watson hereby extends an exuberant invitation for us to think deeply about the world of today and envision what kind of world we wish to create in the future. In a fascinating and accessible way, Digital vs Human examines the possible effects of technology on every area of our lives.

Existence

Existence
Author: Valentin Matcas
Publisher: Valentin Leonard Matcas
Total Pages: 67
Release: 1900
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

It is easy to distinguish what it is from what it is not, just by telling them apart. Since this is the simplistic, empirical approach while studying existence. Yet what exactly is existence itself? How or where does existence exist? Is existence limited to the human existence, human cognition, or the humankind? Yes, because all living beings are defined by existence, just because the term ‘being’ implies to be, to exist. However, the term ‘real’ implies the same. Because the concept ‘existence’ has a multitude of terms defining it, and now we have to consider them while studying existence in all details. And as you notice, we are not looking for a superficial, empirical study, because we already have one, since we already know that everything that exists exists and everything that does not exist does not exist. We want more, we want a comprehensive study of existence, from all perspectives: existential, rational, living, interconnected, social, objective, analytical, created, consensual, cognitive, natural, mathematical, consensual, developmental, scientific, fiat, empirical, subjective, philosophical, ideological, highjective, accurate, algorithmic, legal, and correspondent. Only that, from all these distinct perspectives of existence, we end up with a distinct type of existence, as we have to consider these. But what exactly is there escaping the senses of perception of all living beings in this world? The nonexistent, certainly. And what exactly exists and takes place beyond existence itself? Again, it is the nonexistent. Yet this is the case only for us and from our perspective, since existence is relative to any observer. You have one existence defining you, and it is your own existence. And in this manner, you may exist even on your own, and you still exist, for yourself. Yet for others, if they never encounter and never interact with you directly and implicitly, then you do not exist for them, you are simply part of the inexistent according to them, and so are they for you, from your own perspective. Because there might be zillions of worlds and realities similar to ours, but if they never interact with us, then they never exist for us, while we never exist for them. And this is the case for all realities, because nothing exists objectively at the exterior of any reality, not even the concept of ‘exterior’ itself. We already notice how existence is capable to define everything as existing or not, in this simple Boolean manner. And this is the case because existence stands towards the base of our world, defining everything within to exist, to be real, or simply to be, since it is the same concept. However, when you try to define existence itself, you cannot, since there is not much below it to form a meaningful base of knowledge defining it, but only the absent, the missing, the unreal, or the nonexistent, distinguishing existence trivially, by contrast. This is your only mean to define accurately existence now, as being different from the nonexistent, and this is why you end up with a Boolean depiction for existence. To be or not to be. But never to be and not to be. While existence defines everything else in a similar Boolean manner: you either exist or you do not. You either interconnect with others being part of their existence, or not. You are either alive, or not. You are either fulfilling throughout life, or not. Throughout this book, we study existence entirely, through accurate facts, from all perspectives and in all circumstances, in order to understand it accurately. Furthermore, we use existence to define, understand, and explain everything related to humans and human life. And since existence stands at the base of everything that exists, this accounts for everything.

Homo Prospectus

Homo Prospectus
Author: Martin E. P. Seligman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2016-06-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019937449X

Our species is misnamed. Though sapiens defines human beings as "wise" what humans do especially well is to prospect the future. We are homo prospectus. In this book, Martin E. P. Seligman, Peter Railton, Roy F. Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada argue it is anticipating and evaluating future possibilities for the guidance of thought and action that is the cornerstone of human success. Much of the history of psychology has been dominated by a framework in which people's behavior is driven by past history (memory) and present circumstances (perception and motivation). Homo Prospectus reassesses this idea, pushing focus to the future front and center and opening discussion of a new field of Psychology and Neuroscience. The authors delve into four modes in which prospection operates: the implicit mind, deliberate thought, mind-wandering, and collective (social) imagination. They then explore prospection's role in some of life's most enduring questions: Why do people think about the future? Do we have free will? What is the nature of intuition, and how might it function in ethics? How does emotion function in human psychology? Is there a common causal process in different psychopathologies? Does our creativity change with age? In this remarkable convergence of research in philosophy, statistics, decision theory, psychology, and neuroscience, Homo Prospectus shows how human prospection fundamentally reshapes our understanding of key cognitive processes, thereby improving individual and social functioning. It aims to galvanize interest in this new science from scholars in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, as well as an educated public curious about what makes humanity what it is.

Why Does the World Exist

Why Does the World Exist
Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012-07-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0871404095

In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.