In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.

Why do we exist? Where did the earth, sun, galaxy, and the entire universe come from? What is time, and does it even exist? Why does religion cause so much war? And in the end, what’s the point of it all? While scientists, religious leaders, and historians have all provided insight into the origins of existence and the causes of major world events, often these explanations are at worst contradictory or at best inconsistent. However, without tricks or speculation—and with some plain old common sense—is there a way to discover the answers to questions about our existence beyond these different and widely held seeds of thought? Why We Exist—Life, Science, and More provides an uncommon explanation about the origins of existence that overviews and synthesizes conclusions from the life sciences, physical sciences, and religion. Using common sense logic to show how topics like gravity, time, the universe, and war are all interrelated and point to the existence of a so-called “third entity”—an entity that must exist and of which everything is a part—we can walk away with a new and exciting knowledge. Answering these timeless questions about our existence can open our eyes and minds to a veritable new world of insight and inspiration. Taking this journey to discover fulfilling answers about why we exist will prove to be not only a fun and thought-provoking quest—it will also be both useful and meaningful to our continued lives.

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham.

The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.

Human beings have questioned their existence for as long as they have been able to ponder and reason. This text transcends fantasy and science fiction in its simple presentation of reality and leaves the reader with the most profound perspective of human existence available.

Whatever be your purpose of learning English-whether you want to study in an Anglophone country, or aspiring to enter Hollywood, want to be involved in Disney productions or Discovery channel, you need have your basics right. All ice creams are same in their basic way of making, only their flavoring is different. The flavor is what gives ice creams their marketability and profitability. Whether you want to learn legal English, Screenplay English, or Scientific English, your basics must be strong because these English versions are but specialized flavors of the basic English. Never before that Standard English has been brought forward this easier to the common man, especially teenagers. This book has been flavored with icons (ice creams), signposts (indication of the part of grammar under discussion), illustrations, examples, and cherry-picked quotations from great minds to engage you in reading and understanding the book. Learn the rich history behind the English language; overcome your learning barriers; get to know the best way to learn English; find a purpose; learn in easy, enjoyable, and memorable way; make a mess of jumbled, meaningless words and turn them into masterpieces; develop good reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Written to make Grammar easy and fun, this book is for everyone under the sun.

Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world a US News and World Report cover story called him a genius and a renegade thinker, even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe. Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, toward doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universes genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around. In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe our own from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the readers ideas of life--time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal. The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.