The Big Picture
Layered
Creative
Deep

The Big Picture On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

"The award-winning Caltech physicist and author of The Particle at the End of the Universe shares sweeping perspectives into how human purpose and meaning naturally fit into a scientific worldview,"--Amazon.com.
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Reviews

Photo of Owen McGrath
Owen McGrath@bearygood
4.5 stars
Jul 20, 2024

An incredible, well painted picture of everything that humans are and have ever thought about.

I thoroughly enjoyed each piece of this book, even if it was incredibly hard to understand.

+7
Photo of Timeo Williams
Timeo Williams@timeowilliams
5 stars
Jun 5, 2024

The Big Picture Dear Sean, Thank you for sharing this wonderful synthesis of a book, connecting philosophy and science very well and with easy to understand examples for the layman.

Photo of Jared Connor
Jared Connor@loopstrangely
4 stars
Dec 20, 2023

Concise representation on how to view the world from the past, and extrapolated forward in the future.

Photo of Dimitris Papastergiou
Dimitris Papastergiou@s4murai
4 stars
Jul 1, 2023

I'd argue to not read this and read the Grand Design instead, but that wasn't the best thing ever either with a bunch of repetitive filler lines over-explaining everything and well, not really from Stephen Hawking either. But I'm gonna give this +1 more star than I gave the Grand Design simply because it was more engaging and I think I learned much more from this one and researched far more shit than the other one. Oh well.. Not that THIS one was the easiest thing ever, while I was indeed searching for words and meanings on a bunch of stuff cuz English is not my native language (duh), everything was clearly explainable and understandable as easy as possible. This is what's inside basically: Modern science can't yet explain everything about the universe or the human mind (duh-doy) there's a bunch of shit we do know (DUH) because of science (DUUUUHHHH). The laws of physics and a bunch of other scientific shit have given us a great deal of insight and explanations to nearly everything around us, from why the Earth orbits around the sun, to why pseudo-scientific theories, like telekinesis (yaaay Jean Grey) or teleportation *BAMF* or a bunch of other superhero stuff are just bullshit. But well, if we zoom out and look at the bigger picture , by applying scientific thinking we can also shed light on questions that have baffled us for ages. Like how time works, how complexity arises out of order and what the mind is made of. What I liked was the chapters about the theoretical Particle X, was a nice brain-scratcher and with a bunch of what-ifs, and well sure that was all imagination and shit but true to theory and understandable. And the chapter about Aristotle was quite good and true to the source, from what I can remember about reading Aristotle back in the days of wanting to read about our people of yore. But yeah, Aristotle basically said what scientists are saying in the last couple of years, with a simple example (taken from the book) "if you put a book over a table, the book itself cannot move by itself unless there's a force that makes it move". That basically tells us that nothing that's stable can move on its own or create something by itself, and Aristotle's theory was that, when we push something or react to something ( the author here uses the term causality formula which is taken from a scientific term of course ) we create something out of it, which is how the world came to be. That something made someone do something so that's how evolution came to be. Someone had to do something, something made the homo-whateverous to stand on his feet, to go hunt to eat to shit to fuck to go out of the water and stop being amphibious or whateverious. SO... we come to the conclusion that SOMETHING had to HAPPEN for the universe to just START. Someone HAD to make SOMETHING for the universe to be created, and well, Aristotle's theory was that THAT something/someone was simply.. yeah you guessed it... God. Anyway, nice book and yeah, I wrote a lot for a review. Fuck. What the hell is wrong with me. I'm going to read some Batman now to clear my head from all this nonsense.

Photo of Felipe Saldarriaga
Felipe Saldarriaga @felipesaldata
5 stars
Jan 3, 2023

Más que una respuesta universal, te da una perspectiva más amplia a lo que otros autores como Richard Dawkins había sacudido en su momento con el gen egoísta, sin duda, Sean Carroll ha sido de mis favoritos descubrimientos de este año 💙

Photo of Colton Ray
Colton Ray@coltonmray
5 stars
Apr 16, 2024
Photo of Eitan Hershkovitz
Eitan Hershkovitz@ehershkovitz
4 stars
Aug 10, 2023
Photo of Cory Forsyth
Cory Forsyth@bantic
4 stars
Apr 15, 2023
Photo of Daniel Lauzon
Daniel Lauzon@daneroo
4 stars
Sep 5, 2022
Photo of Philip Harrison
Philip Harrison@feelepxyz
5 stars
Sep 5, 2022
Photo of Christopher Wheeler
Christopher Wheeler@woolgatherist
5 stars
Aug 12, 2022
Photo of Chris Aldrich
Chris Aldrich@chrisaldrich
3 stars
Dec 26, 2021
Photo of Adam Wilson
Adam Wilson@adamwilson
5 stars
Sep 14, 2021
Photo of Jeremy Cote
Jeremy Cote@cote
5 stars
Aug 7, 2021