It's a mind-numbing question that touches upon the lofty -- quantum cosmology, the existence of God and consciousness -- and yet can also be boiled down to familiar elementary school chicken-and-the-egg analogies. The bitter arguments it has fomented between optimists and pessimists, atheists and believers, has a tendency to get bogged down in semantic imbroglios and rhetorical obscurantism.
Thankfully, Holt is not out to promote a religious or political agenda. Nor is he a physicist with a theory to sell or explain (his chapter, "The Arithmetic of Nothingness" lasts only five pages). He's one of us lay theorists who prefer to ponder big ideas over a glass of wine or while walking the dog. With Holt, an erudite and witty guide, we review some of the classical and enlightenment philosophers' (Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, and Hume among them, though Democritus is a surprising omission) ideas about nothingness and existence, time and matter. Holt goes on to describe his trips to Paris and Oxford, Austen and Pittsburgh, where he meets with eminent thinkers and scholars in the field today like David Deutsch, Steven Weinberg, and Richard Swinburne.
These "interludes," as Holt calls them, are droll and entertaining. It's fun to rub shoulders with great contemporary muses (and see what their living rooms look like or what crazy drivers they are). It's even more gratifying to witness them scratching their heads the same way we do over questions about, like, the ultimate origin of reality!
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