Forthcoming ITBio-related book from Sean Carroll: “The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself”

In catching up on blogs/reading from the holidays, I’ve noticed that physicist Sean Carroll has a forthcoming book entitled The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, May 10, 2016) that will be of interest to many of our readers. One can already pre-order the book via Amazon.

Prior to the holidays Sean wrote a blogpost that contains a full overview table of contents, which will give everyone a stronger idea of its contents. For convenience I’ll excerpt it below.

I’ll post a review as soon as a copy arrives, but it looks like a strong new entry in the category of popular science books on information theory, biology and complexity as well as potentially the areas of evolution, the origin of life, and physics in general.

As a side bonus, for those reading this today (1/15/16), I’ll note that Carroll’s 12 part lecture series from The Great Courses The Higgs Boson and Beyond (The Learning Company, February 2015) is 80% off.

THE BIG PICTURE: ON THE ORIGINS OF LIFE, MEANING, AND THE UNIVERSE ITSELF

0. Prologue

* Part One: Cosmos

1. The Fundamental Nature of Reality

2. Poetic Naturalism

3. The World Moves By Itself

4. What Determines What Will Happen Next?

5. Reasons Why

6. Our Universe

7. Time’s Arrow

8. Memories and Causes

* Part Two: Understanding

9. Learning About the World

10. Updating Our Knowledge

11. Is It Okay to Doubt Everything?

12. Reality Emerges

13. What Exists, and What Is Illusion?

14. Planets of Belief

15. Accepting Uncertainty

16. What Can We Know About the Universe Without Looking at It?

17. Who Am I?

18. Abducting God

* Part Three: Essence

19. How Much We Know

20. The Quantum Realm

21. Interpreting Quantum Mechanics

22. The Core Theory

23. The Stuff of Which We Are Made

24. The Effective Theory of the Everyday World

25. Why Does the Universe Exist?

26. Body and Soul

27. Death Is the End

* Part Four: Complexity

28. The Universe in a Cup of Coffee

29. Light and Life

30. Funneling Energy

31. Spontaneous Organization

32. The Origin and Purpose of Life

33. Evolution’s Bootstraps

34. Searching Through the Landscape

35. Emergent Purpose

36. Are We the Point?

* Part Five: Thinking

37. Crawling Into Consciousness

38. The Babbling Brain

39. What Thinks?

40. The Hard Problem

41. Zombies and Stories

42. Are Photons Conscious?

43. What Acts on What?

44. Freedom to Choose

* Part Six: Caring

45. Three Billion Heartbeats

46. What Is and What Ought to Be

47. Rules and Consequences

48. Constructing Goodness

49. Listening to the World

50. Existential Therapy

Appendix: The Equation Underlying You and Me

Acknowledgments

Further Reading

References

Index

Source: Sean Carroll | The Big Picture: Table of Contents

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Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media. View all posts by Chris Aldrich