A World Beyond Physics
The Emergence and Evolution of Life
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Narrated by:
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Bob Souer
About this listen
Among the estimated 100 billion solar systems in the known universe, evolving life is surely abundant. That evolution is a process of "becoming" in each case. Since Newton, we have turned to physics to assess reality. But physics alone cannot tell us where we came from, how we arrived, and why our world has evolved past the point of unicellular organisms to an extremely complex biosphere.
Building on concepts from his work at the Santa Fe Institute, Kauffman focuses in particular on the idea of cells constructing themselves and introduces concepts such as "constraint closure". Living systems are defined by the concept of "organization" which has not been focused on in enough in previous works. Cells are autopoetic systems that build themselves: They literally construct their own constraints on the release of energy into a few degrees of freedom that constitutes the very thermodynamic work by which they build their own self creating constraints. Living cells are "machines" that construct and assemble their own working parts. The emergence of such systems - the origin-of-life problem - was probably a spontaneous phase transition to self-reproduction in complex enough prebiotic systems. The resulting protocells were capable of Darwin's heritable variation, hence open-ended evolution by natural selection.
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Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.
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Uneven
- By NJ on 03-03-20
By: Brian Greene
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Origins
- The Scientific Story of Creation
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Neil Scott-Barbour
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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What is the nature of the material world? How does it work? What is the universe and how was it formed? What is life? Where do we come from and how did we evolve? How and why do we think? What does it mean to be human? How do we know? There are many different versions of our creation story. This book tells the version according to modern science. It is a unique account, starting at the Big Bang and travelling right up to the emergence of humans as conscious intelligent beings, 13.8 billion years later.
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Interesting book, but WOW, the narrator ...
- By UH on 01-10-17
By: Jim Baggott
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Science and the Akashic Field
- An Integral Theory of Everything
- By: Ervin Laszlo
- Narrated by: Tom Pile
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic field is real and has its equivalent in science's zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness.
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A must-read about ultimate nature of reality
- By Alexandra Hopkins on 04-15-18
By: Ervin Laszlo
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Infinite Powers
- How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves. Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes "backwards" sometimes; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
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Not written to be read aloud
- By Anonymous User on 02-21-20
By: Steven Strogatz
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The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
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ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
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The Science of Discworld
- A Novel
- By: Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
- Narrated by: Michael Fenton Stevens, Stephen Briggs
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.
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Not the best Pratchett, but gets there in the end
- By Rachel on 07-30-14
By: Terry Pratchett, and others
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Radical Abundance
- How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
- By: K. Eric Drexler
- Narrated by: Tim Pabon
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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K. Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology - the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment.
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Drexler Rehashes the Past
- By Anonymous User on 10-19-13
By: K. Eric Drexler
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Beyond Biocentrism
- Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death
- By: Robert Lanza, Bob Berman
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.
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Here's the thing
- By Mikal on 11-09-18
By: Robert Lanza, and others
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Sync
- How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.
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Engaging, but maybe better suited for non-audio
- By Ryan on 05-26-12
By: Steven Strogatz
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Exoplanets
- Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets, and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System
- By: Michael Summers
- Narrated by: Jon Bennett
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its 2009 launch, the Kepler satellite has discovered more than 2,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. More exoplanets are being discovered all the time, remarkable in their variety. Astronomer Michael Summers and physicist James Trefil explore these remarkable recent discoveries: planets revolving around pulsars, planets made of diamond, planets that are mostly water, and numerous rogue planets wandering through the emptiness of space.
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FINALLY, an Attention-Grabbing Planet Book!
- By aaron on 05-11-17
By: Michael Summers
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The World According to Physics
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Jim Al-Khalili
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Shining a light on the most profound insights revealed by modern physics, Jim Al-Khalili invites us all to understand what this crucially important science tells us about the universe and the nature of reality itself. Al-Khalili begins by introducing the fundamental concepts of space, time, energy, and matter, and then describes the three pillars of modern physics - quantum theory, relativity, and thermodynamics - showing how all three must come together if we are ever to have a full understanding of reality.
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excellent book
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-21
By: Jim Al-Khalili
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What listeners say about A World Beyond Physics
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-10-20
New ideas are everywhere
Great book with new ideas, told clearly and a bit poetic. Useful for those who study complex systems.
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- Prime Member
- 12-31-21
This book and on being you are the two books AI workers should read this year
Kaufman Summarizes and synthesizes ideas on how life started in the nature of the biosphere. Each book advances his understanding a little bit, and this is a culmination although probably hard to fully understand unless you’ve been through some of his earlier stuff. However his writing style seems to improve from Book to Book and this one is very clear and fairly short. In my opinion he’s summarizes some of the most important things to know in science and buy extrapolation for artificial intelligence today.
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2 people found this helpful
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- P. K. Bellville
- 02-10-23
beyond biology
Several chapters are steeped in biochemical jargon that is difficult for the layman to understand. But the author has theories involving physics, biology, evolution, philosophy and even economics that are intriguing.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Shawn Kass
- 02-28-23
Interesting premiss
Positing that physics can explain the birth of life, the author takes us on an interesting trip through time. It's an interesting read, and the implications have a wide range of possibilities.
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- Oswaldo De Freitas Jr.
- 11-06-19
Science at the edge
Books like this take the readers to the edge of science. It seems that Nature does play dices after all.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 02-17-24
Great read. Boring listen
I love Kauffman. it's a wonderful book on life. I was extremely out off by the robotic narration. I will have to buy and read the book instead.
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1 person found this helpful
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- PS
- 11-22-19
Bleh!!
I found this audiobook a hodgepodge of exciting, some rejected and mostly speculative ideas, neither here nor there. It is short and hence sorely inadequate in covering the rich, complex and diverse topic of origins in any sense. It failed to provide me with any measure of digestible information about how life may have actually originated. Unnecessary repetition of phrases encoding simple straightforward concepts such as 'ergodic universe above the level of atoms' just comes off as pretentious rather than as a sincere attempt to educate the listener. Anthropomorphization of dna molecules would have been fun if the preceding and following passages had conveyed any actual scientifically-grounded information rather than fantasies. On more than one occasion, I felt that the author was striving to sound informed about the topic rather than truly understanding the depth of the problem. I would have been more interested in lectures that detailed his own work, or devoted more time to constraint closure concepts with accompanying diagrams. In the end, the audiobook just left me frustrated with a growing sense that I was listening to nonsense after the first hour.
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10 people found this helpful
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- RickyF
- 02-11-23
A poor selection
The author is enamored with terminology. His writing is dense. His thinking is not. The narrator is dull. Terrible book.
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