Here are 100 books that Why Does the World Exist? fans have personally recommended if you like
Why Does the World Exist?.
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I’ve been fascinated by science since I was a small child. I used to try to drag my parents up to London’s Natural History Museum to gawk at dinosaurs every other Sunday and remember the delight of seeing Saturn and its rings through a telescope from our back garden. I started reading popular science books as a teenager and they were a large part of what inspired me to ultimately become a physicist. I hope the books on this list will bring a bit of awe and wonder into your life!
I didn’t so much read this book as inhale it. Rovelli’s writing is always highly readable, and this one is no exception. The book tells the dramatic story of the origin of quantum mechanics, beginning with a holiday spent on the windswept island of Helgoland by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s.
Rovelli introduces the history of the core ideas of quantum mechanics with great clarity and provides an interesting new way of interpreting quantum weirdness that I found fascinating.
Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian
“Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator… This is the place where science comes to life.” ―Neil Gaiman
“One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book” ―John Banville, The Wall Street Journal
A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Anaximander.
I am a professor of humanities at Johns Hopkins and have spent my career thinking, teaching, and writing about the relations between literature, philosophy, and science. Many years ago I started out thinking I would be a scientist, but then got pulled into literature and philosophy. Still, that original passion never left me. As I studied and read the great authors and thinkers from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the modern era, the big, fundamental questions of our place in the universe and the ultimate nature of reality seemed as pertinent to poets and philosophers as it is to physicists and cosmologists.
Labatut’s book defies categorization. Is it a novel? Is it philosophy? Is it narrative non-fiction? It’s somehow all the above.
Delving into the mysteries of humanity’s drive to understand nature, Labatut explores a handful of real personalities from the twentieth century as they struggled against the abyss toward which their very capacity to reason pushed them.
Profound, funny, absurd, and gorgeously written, When We Cease to Understand the World awakens a sense of wonder at the complexity of the universe, and the power of the human intellects that grapple with it.
When We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain.
Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schroedinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionise our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.
At breakneck pace and with wondrous detail, Benjamin Labatut uses the…
I am a professor of humanities at Johns Hopkins and have spent my career thinking, teaching, and writing about the relations between literature, philosophy, and science. Many years ago I started out thinking I would be a scientist, but then got pulled into literature and philosophy. Still, that original passion never left me. As I studied and read the great authors and thinkers from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the modern era, the big, fundamental questions of our place in the universe and the ultimate nature of reality seemed as pertinent to poets and philosophers as it is to physicists and cosmologists.
I know of few physicists more immersed in the history of philosophy, religion, and culture than Marcelo Gleiser.
A brilliant cosmologist and Templeton award winner with multiple books exploring the biggest questions in physics and spirituality, Gleiser’s brand new book is, as its subtitle suggests, also a manifesto. No less than our very future depends on a renewed understanding of the extraordinary and utterly unique nature of intelligent life, and of the special place it holds in the universe.
An award-winning astronomer and physicist's spellbinding and urgent call for a new Enlightenment and the recognition of the preciousness of life using reason and curiosity-the foundations of science-to study, nurture, and ultimately preserve humanity as we face the existential crisis of climate change.
Since Copernicus, humanity has increasingly seen itself as adrift, an insignificant speck within a large, cold universe. Brazilian physicist, astronomer, and winner of the 2019 Templeton Prize Marcelo Gleiser argues that it is because we have lost the spark of the Enlightenment that has guided human development over the past several centuries. While some scientific efforts have…
I am a professor of humanities at Johns Hopkins and have spent my career thinking, teaching, and writing about the relations between literature, philosophy, and science. Many years ago I started out thinking I would be a scientist, but then got pulled into literature and philosophy. Still, that original passion never left me. As I studied and read the great authors and thinkers from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the modern era, the big, fundamental questions of our place in the universe and the ultimate nature of reality seemed as pertinent to poets and philosophers as it is to physicists and cosmologists.
Sean Carroll has a special knack for explaining complicated stuff, and there a few things more complicated than comparing and contrasting the various competing interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Carroll has a horse in this race—the many worlds interpretation—and he’s not shy about making his case, which is in part why the book is so entertaining. A spirited polemicist, Carroll knows his chosen theory has many detractors, but he’s more than ready to debate. As a bonus his writing is as personable and witty as his explanations are clear.
'An authoritative and beautifully written account of the quest to understand quantum theory and the origin of space and time.' Professor Brian Cox
Quantum physics is not mystifying. The implications are mind-bending, and not yet fully understood, but this revolutionary theory is truly illuminating. It stands as the best explanation of the fundamental nature of our world.
Spanning the history of quantum discoveries, from Einstein and Bohr to the present day, Something Deeply Hidden is the essential guide to the most intriguing subject in science. Acclaimed physicist and writer Sean Carroll debunks the…
I studied Greek philosophy in college and graduate school and wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on Plato. In response to the environmental crisis, first widely recognized in the 1960s, I turned my philosophical attention to that contemporary challenge, which, with the advent of climate change, has by now proved to be humanity’s greatest. I taught the world’s first course in environmental ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 1971 and, with a handful of other philosophers, helped build a literature in this new field over the course of the next decade—a literature that has subsequently grown exponentially. With Greek Natural Philosophy, I rekindled the romance with my first love.
MIT scientist Tegmark directly connects contemporary physics and cosmology with our story of the Presocratic natural philosophers.
In his view the universe is not only described in the language of mathematics, it is a huge purely mathematical object. This was precisely the view of the Pythagoreans. In the course of expounding his theory of a mathematical universe, Tegmark brings the lay reader up to date on the latest developments in natural philosophy (aka theoretical physics and cosmology) and demonstrates their continuity with those of their ancient predecessors.
Nature, said Galileo, is 'a book written in the language of mathematics'. But why should this be? How can mathematics be at the heart of our universe?
The great Hungarian physicist and Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner stressed that this 'unreasonable effectiveness' of mathematics at describing the world was a mystery demanding explanation. Here, Max Tegmark, one of the most original cosmologists at work today, takes us on an astonishing journey to solve that mystery.
Part-history of the cosmos, part-intellectual adventure, Our Mathematical Universe travels from the Big Bang to the distant future via parallel worlds, across every possible scale -…
When I was a teenager, my dad decided he wanted to make an astronomical telescope, so he ground and polished the mirror for an 8-inch reflecting telescope. Then he also helped me make one in our basement. I ended up with something I’d made that showed me the pearly rings of Saturn and the wispy details of the Andromeda nebula! I was hooked and kept my interest in astronomy alive through years of math and physics courses.
For those wanting to delve deeper into cosmology, I can strongly recommend this clearly written college-level textbook. It develops the equations that govern the expansion of the Universe and shows how they depend on the kinds of matter and radiation that fill the Universe. It explains the origin of structures like galaxies and clusters of galaxies and how that structure evolved over time. And it examines the observations, including of the CMB, that have transformed cosmology into a precision science.
I’ve used it often in classes; I love it, and the students do too.
This second edition of Introduction to Cosmology is an exciting update of an award-winning textbook. It is aimed primarily at advanced undergraduate students in physics and astronomy, but is also useful as a supplementary text at higher levels. It explains modern cosmological concepts, such as dark energy, in the context of the Big Bang theory. Its clear, lucid writing style, with a wealth of useful everyday analogies, makes it exceptionally engaging. Emphasis is placed on the links between theoretical concepts of cosmology and the observable properties of the universe, building deeper physical insights in the reader. The second edition includes…
My twenty books have won top awards for lifetime scholarship in American studies, science fiction, prison literature, the Vietnam war, and marine ecology. My writing is just part of my six decades as an activist for peace and justice, which made me a major target of the FBI’s operation COINTELPRO and led Stanford to fire me from my tenured professorship. I then taught for 40 years at Rutgers University in Newark as The John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies.
No other book has influenced me so deeply. Arthur C. Clarke wrote it is "probably the most powerful work of imagination ever written." As I now reread Star Maker, published in 1937 when I was three years old, I still find passages so profound that they send my mind into orbit. The book takes us through time and space to a future when that entire conscious cosmos yearns to meet its creator. It ends with a prophetic awareness that “the struggle of our age was brewing” and the hope that our species can make it “before the ultimate darkness.”
This bold exploration of the cosmos ventures into intelligent star clusters and mingles among alien races for a memorable vision of infinity. Cited as a key influence by science-fiction masters such as Doris Lessing, this classic has left its mark not only in modern literature but also in the fields of social anthropology and philosophy. Olaf Stapledon's 1937 successor to Last and First Men offers another entrancing speculative history of the future. Its narrator, a contemporary Earthman, joins a community of explorers who travel to the farthest reaches of the universe, seeking traces of intelligence. Along the way, they encounter…
I have always been astounded by the mysteries of life and the cosmos. I soon realized that religion did not provide a satisfactory answer to these mysteries. Majoring in philosophy in college, I studied the world’s great thinkers and began an ongoing exploration of scientific theories purporting to explain the world we live in. These theories, based on scientific materialism, also proved unsatisfying, though for different reasons than religion. Consequently, I devoted 35 years–during a legal career–to researching and writing my book, intended to go beyond science and religion in the quest to explain the mysteries of the cosmos.
I love this book because, in 130 pages, it summarizes how the fundamental elements, forces, and constants of our universe are precisely tuned to allow for the possibility of life. The book is scientifically rigorous and filled with just enough facts, figures, and charts to present a powerful case.
But in making his case, Paul Davies also shows his own curiosity over how it came to pass that the inear-nfinite, ever-changing pieces of our world work together. Is the universe an accident or, as Roger Penrose (another leading scientist) once said, a “put-up job?” In the end, I like this book because it shows that the deepest scientific investigation of the world leads to the same sense of wonder I have experienced in the fields of philosophy and spirituality.
In The Accidental Universe renowned expositor Paul Davies grapples with the most fundamental questions of all. What is our purpose and the purpose of the universe? Are both an accident of nature? Paul Davies guides us through the mysterious coincidences underlying the structure and properties of the universe we inhabit. He sets out the intriguing hypothesis that the appearance of the universe and its properties are highly contrived. Paul Davies gives a survey of the range of apparently miraculous accidents of nature that have enabled the universe to evolve its familiar structure of atoms, stars, galaxies and life itself. This…
When I was a teenager, my dad decided he wanted to make an astronomical telescope, so he ground and polished the mirror for an 8-inch reflecting telescope. Then he also helped me make one in our basement. I ended up with something I’d made that showed me the pearly rings of Saturn and the wispy details of the Andromeda nebula! I was hooked and kept my interest in astronomy alive through years of math and physics courses.
This is the place to start. The title says it all–this is a short but elegant introduction to the science of the Universe written by a leading researcher in cosmology. It is a clear and excellent entrée to the subject. It also provides a succinct summary of all that we learned from space and ground-based observations of the cosmic microwave background, which is my particular passion.
The cutting-edge science that is taking the measure of the universe
The Little Book of Cosmology provides a breathtaking look at our universe on the grandest scales imaginable. Written by one of the world's leading experimental cosmologists, this short but deeply insightful book describes what scientists are revealing through precise measurements of the faint thermal afterglow of the Big Bang-known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB-and how their findings are transforming our view of the cosmos.
Blending the latest findings in cosmology with essential concepts from physics, Lyman Page first helps readers to grasp the sheer enormity of the…
As a child, I felt profoundly dissatisfied by the pat and cardboard cutout explanations that some teachers offered for life and the universe: there had to be more! I decided to go into science. The explanatory power of science is 'next level,' to use a contemporary phrase, and unless and until we explore it, we'll miss the beauty and sheer wonder of the universe. Neither should we overly specialize: science is not compartmentalized, but vastly different fields of science feed into and reinforce one another. Popular science has an essential role to play: irrespective of how arcane hard science may appear to be, its story can always be told in everyday words.
This often startling book provides a tour d'horizon of unsettled questions in modern physical science and, most importantly, of the intriguing directions the answers could take. It should inspire many in the rising generations of students to take the baton from their elders and seek a career in science at the edges of human understanding. A book I so wish had already been around when I began studying physics.
Tom Siegfried is a distinguished science journalist.
Scientists studying the universe find strange things in two places?out in space and in their heads. This is the story of how the most imaginative physicists of our time perceive strange features of the universe in advance of the actual discoveries.
It is almost a given that physics and cosmology present us with some of the grandest mysteries of all. What weightier questions to ponder than, "How does the universe work?" or "What is the universe made of?" There are any number of bizarre phenomena that could provide clues or even answers to these queries. The strangeness ranges from unusual…
