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£20.00
What can we really know about the world around us? With clarity and lightness, physicist Carlo Rovelli guides us through the speculative depths of modern physics, unafraid to test their limits, not least because, as he suggests, there may be no final ground to reach. Electrons and minds, stones and laws, judgements and galaxies are not essentially different in nature from one another. They are ideas that illuminate each other. Reality, he shows, is shaped by this continuous play of reflections. From this emerges Rovelli’s central insight: the equality of all things. Like the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, who dreams he is a butterfly and wakes unsure whether he is Zhuangzi dreaming to be a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming to be Zhuangzi, Rovelli invites us to see reality anew, recognizing our knowledge is coherent but also uncertain and circular.
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£18.99
Ezeani is no ordinary child. He sees things others don’t. Despite the burden of these visions, his precocious nature blossoms into genius and Ezeani grows up to be a gifted mathematician and physicist. When he leaves Nigeria and his adoring family behind to study at Cornell in the US, he remains haunted by his most persistent vision, Anyanwu, the Sun God. While Ezeani is adjusting to his new life in America, Anyanwu’s presence takes on an increasingly sinister and malevolent form – and chaos reigns. It’s enough to make anyone lose their grip on reality. ‘The Comfort of Distant Stars’ is a bold coming-of-age tale blending physics, philosophy and Igbo cosmology, examining how we understand our place in the universe. It ponders the big questions we all ask ourselves about the nature of time and of being – ultimately revealing the startling vulnerability of the human mind.
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£9.99
These seven ‘short lessons’ guide us through the scientific revolution that shook physics in the 20th century and still continues to shake us today. Rovelli explains Einstein’s theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, elementary particles, gravity, and the nature of the mind.
