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Sociology of Religion, God - Theology, Atheism & Agnosticism, Religion - General & Miscellaneous
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates by Howard Bloom — book cover

The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates

by Howard Bloom
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Overview

God’s war crimes, Aristotle’s sneaky tricks, Einstein’s pajamas, information theory’s blind spot, Stephen Wolfram’s new kind of science, and six monkeys at six typewriters getting it wrong. What do these have to do with the birth of a universe and with your need for meaning? Everything, as you’re about to see. How does the cosmos do something it has long been thought only gods could achieve? How does an inanimate universe generate stunning new forms and unbelievable new powers without a creator? How does the cosmos create? That’s the central question of this book, which finds clues in strange places. Why A does not equal A. Why one plus one does not equal two. How the Greeks used kickballs to reinvent the universe. And the reason that Polish-born Benoît Mandelbrot—the father of fractal geometry—rebelled against his uncle.You’ll take a scientific expedition into the secret heart of a cosmos you’ve never seen. Not just any cosmos. An electrifyingly inventive cosmos. An obsessive-compulsive cosmos. A driven, ambitious cosmos. A cosmos of colossal shocks. A cosmos of screaming, stunning surprise. A cosmos that breaks five of science’s most sacred laws. Yes, five. And you’ll be rewarded with author Howard Bloom’s provocative new theory of the beginning, middle, and end of the universe—the Bloom toroidal model, also known as the big bagel theory—which explains two of the biggest mysteries in physics: dark energy and why, if antimatter and matter are created in equal amounts, there is so little antimatter in this universe. Called "truly awesome" by Nobel Prize–winner Dudley Herschbach, The God Problem will pull you in with the irresistible attraction of a black hole and spit you out again enlightened with the force of a big bang. Be prepared to have your mind blown.

About the Author, Howard Bloom

Howard Bloom has been called "the Darwin, Newton, Einstein, and Freud of the twenty-first century" and "the next Stephen Hawking." He is the author of The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable"—James Fallows, national correspondent, the Atlantic Monthly); Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"—the New Yorker); and The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"—the Washington Post). A recent visiting scholar at New York University, Bloom is the founder of the International Paleopsychology Project, founder of the Space Development Steering Committee (a group that includes astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Edgar Mitchell), and a founding board member of the Epic of Evolution Society. In addition, his scientific articles have appeared in PhysicaPlus, New Ideas in Psychology, and Across Species Comparisons and Psychopathology and on arXiv.org. He has appeared on Good Morning America, the CBS Morning News, CBS News Nightwatch, CNN, the BBC, and over one hundred other media outlets.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

If Howard Bloom is only 10 percent right, we’ll have to drastically revise our notions of the universe. . . . [His] argument will rock your world."
-BARBARA EHRENREICH, National Magazine Award winner and author of Nickel and Dimed

"Enthralling. Astonishing. Written with the panache of the Great Blondin turning somersaults on the rope above Niagara. Profound, extraordinarily eclectic, and crazy. The most exciting cliff-hanger of a book I can remember reading."
-JAMES BURKE, Creator and host of seven BBC-TV series, including Connections

"Bloody hell. . . . What a truly extraordinary book. I’m gobsmacked. It’s a fast-paced, highly readable, and deeply researched thriller-documentary that grapples with the big issues of the universe. . . . Food for the brain."
-FRANCIS PRYOR, President of the Council for British Archaeology, author of Britain BC

"For those of us who do not invoke god(s) to explain things, there is a challenge—where did the complexity of the physical and natural world come from? . . . This deep, provocative, spectacularly well-written book provides some answers. . . . A wonderful book."
-ROBERT SAPOLSKY, MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" winner and author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

"Strong. Like a STEAM ROLLER. Impressive. Great."
-RICHARD FOREMAN, MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" winner and founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater

"A deeply engrossing and mind-bending meld of philosophy and science, written with great clarity, humor, and daring."
-CHARLES SIEBERT, Contributing writer, New York Times Sunday Magazine

"Truly awesome. . . . Bursting with insights and ideas, delivered with delightful verve and zest. . . . A tantalizing, fresh new view of the cosmos for humankind."
-DUDLEY HERSCHBACH, Winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Library Journal

Readers may conclude that their foundational beliefs are wrongheaded. In this provocative and erudite work, Bloom (The Genius of the Beast) deconstructs "heresies" (e.g., A does not equal A; one plus one does not equal two; entropy is wrong) and shatters scientific laws. He, furthermore, poses the question, "How does a godless cosmos create?" Bloom's tone is much less acerbic and much more civil than the New Atheists' vitriol, and to pursue an answer to Bloom's query, readers will traverse a cerebral landscape: a masterful integration of anthropology, history, science, and philosophy. The author exposes readers to his model of cosmology, which he calls the Big Bagel theory. He presumes a multiverse, or "ensemble of universes"; it pays homage to the oscillating or cyclical universe, which expands and contracts ad infinitum. This view, according to Bloom, would unseat the dominant Big Bang model. VERDICT Bloom, an iconoclastic and seminal thinker, has been mentioned in the same breath as Stephen Hawking, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin; this contribution is paradigm-shifting and brings to mind Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In short, this intellectual tour de force and heady expedition will challenge readers' education, assumptions, and perceptions.—Brian Smith McCallum, Arlington Heights Memorial Lib., IL

Book Details

Published
August 24, 2012
Publisher
Prometheus Books
Pages
575
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9781616145514

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