The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates - Hardcover

Bloom, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 161614551X ISBN 13: 9781616145514

Publisher: Prometheus Books, 2012

Synopsis

God’s war crimes, Aristotle’s sneaky tricks, Einstein’s pajamas, information theory’s blind spot, Stephen Wolfram’s new kind of science, and six monkeys at six typewriters getting it wrong. What do these have to do with the birth of a universe and with your need for meaning? Everything, as you’re about to see.

How does the cosmos do something it has long been thought only gods could achieve? How does an inanimate universe generate stunning new forms and unbelievable new powers without a creator? How does the cosmos create?

That’s the central question of this book, which finds clues in strange places. Why A does not equal A. Why one plus one does not equal two. How the Greeks used kickballs to reinvent the universe. And the reason that Polish-born Benoît Mandelbrot—the father of fractal geometry—rebelled against his uncle.

You’ll take a scientific expedition into the secret heart of a cosmos you’ve never seen. Not just any cosmos. An electrifyingly inventive cosmos. An obsessive-compulsive cosmos. A driven, ambitious cosmos. A cosmos of colossal shocks. A cosmos of screaming, stunning surprise. A cosmos that breaks five of science’s most sacred laws. Yes, five. And you’ll be rewarded with author Howard Bloom’s provocative new theory of the beginning, middle, and end of the universe—the Bloom toroidal model, also known as the big bagel theory—which explains two of the biggest mysteries in physics: dark energy and why, if antimatter and matter are created in equal amounts, there is so little antimatter in this universe.

Called "truly awesome" by Nobel Prize–winner Dudley Herschbach, The God Problem will pull you in with the irresistible attraction of a black hole and spit you out again enlightened with the force of a big bang. Be prepared to have your mind blown.

About this title

About the Author

Howard Bloom has been called "next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein, [and] Freud," by Britain's Channel4 TV and "the next Stephen Hawking" by Gear Magazine.   Bloom is the author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"--The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century  ("reassuring and sobering"--The New Yorker), and The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, The Atlantic). Bloom has been published in arxiv.org, the leading pre-print site in advanced theoretical physics and math.  He was invited to tell an international conference of quantum physicists in Moscow in 2006 why everything they know about quantum physics is wrong. And his book Global Brain was the subject of an Office of the Secretary of Defense symposium in  2010 with participants from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT.  Bloom is the founder of three international scientific groups, including the Space Development Steering Committee, an organization that includes astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell and members from NASA, the National Space Society, and the National Science Foundation.      Bloom is a former visiting scholar in the Graduate School of Psychology at NYU and a former core faculty member at the Graduate Institute.   He has written for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Knight-Ridder Financial News Service, the Village Voice, and Cosmopolitan Magazine.  In addition to arXiv.org, his scientific articles have appeared in PhysicaPlus, New Ideas in Psychology, and Across Species Comparisons and Psychopathology.

Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution's End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, "I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom's on the planet."

From the Back Cover

God's war crimes, Aristotle's sneaky tricks, Galileo's creationism, Newton's intelligent design, entropy's errors, Einstein's pajamas, John Conway's game of loneliness, Information Theory's blind spot, Stephen Wolfram's New Kind Of Science, and six monkeys at six typewriters getting it wrong. What do these have to do with the birth of a universe and with your need for meaning? Everything, as you're about to see.

How does the cosmos do something it has long been thought that only gods could achieve? How does an inanimate universe generate stunning new forms and unbelievable new powers without a creator? How does the cosmos create? That's the central question of The God Problem.

"Enthralling. Astonishing. Written with the panache of the Great Blondin turning somersaults on the rope above Niagara. Profound, extraordinarily eclectic, and crazy. The most exciting cliffhanger of a book I can remember reading." James Burke, creator and host of seven BBC TV series, including Connections

"Bloom, with his 'heresies,' penetrates the very foundations of rationality and deconstructs Western consensus reality. The God Problem is the next paradigm. It doesn't take you down the proverbial "rabbit hole" -- it will take you to a place from which you will never re-emerge, a brand new universe in the same skin as the one you now unknowingly inhabit."--Heinz Insu Fenkl, director of ISIS: The Interstitial Studies Institute at SUNY, New Paltz; a Barnes and Noble "Great New Writer" and Pen/Hemingway finalist.

* "A great book. Deep, provocative, spectacularly well written." Robert Sapolsky, Stanford U, MacArthur Genius Award winner, author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

* "Strong. Like a STEAM ROLLER. Impressive. Great." Richard Foreman, founder, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, MacArthur Genius Award-Winner

* "Great literature." Edgar Mitchell, sixth astronaut on the moon

* "Incandescent...shakes out like shining from shook foil and oozes to a greatness," George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, winner of the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence

* "Mind-bending." Charles Siebert, contributing writer, New York Times Sunday Magazine

* "Is The God Problem a great book like Darwin's The Origin Of Species, Lyell's Principles Of Geology, or Newton's Principia Mathematica?" Dan Schneider, Cosmoetica.com, the man Roger Ebert calls the "ideal critic."

* "Bloody Hell... What a truly extraordinary book. I'm gob-smacked." Francis Pryor, President of the Council for British Archaeology, author, Britain BC

* "A cave of wonders," Robin Fox, former director of research for the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation

* "Utterly extraordinary." Matt Thorne, winner of the Encore Award, longlisted for the Booker Prize

* "Thrilling." Hector Zenil, Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Technique

* "The most thrilling thinking matter of our time." Pascal Jouxtel, author of Comment les systèmes pondent, une introduction à la mémétique

* "The ultimate scientific detective story." Mark Lamonica, winner, Southern California Booksellers Association Nonfiction Award

* "A page-turner.'" Walter Putnam, 30-year Associated Press veteran.

* "An ebullient, enthralling piece of intellectual detective work." Alex Wright, Director of User Experience and Product Research, New York Times, author, Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages

* "Profound and extraordinary." Yuri Ozhigov, Moscow State University

* "Absolutely sparkling with ideas." David Christian, founder, International Big History Association.

* "An enjoyment shot through with things you never knew." Allen Johnson, Ex-chair, department of anthropology, UCLA

* "Infectious." Mark Lupisella, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

* "The central illuminations glow." Robert B. Cialdini, Arizona State University, Author of Influence, the most cited social psychologist in the world today

* "Exalted! Glorious! Astounding." Nancy Weber, author of 22 books including The Life Swap

* "An entire paradigm shift!" David Tamm, author, Tsiolkovsky's Imperative

* "What James Joyce's Ulysses might have been like had he written about science. Don't let anyone undersell this." Steve Hovland, video maker

* "Genius." Jean Paul Baquiast Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris

From the Inside Flap

There's a secret hidden in a mathematical nugget called Peano's Axioms. Is Peano 's mystery the key to the cosmos?

The clues lie in five scientific heresies. The five heresies of The God Problem.

"A work of genius. In one book, more history, science, and philosophy than I have encountered in a lifetime of learning. This book stomps mud-tracks across disciplines and slashes with a razor, rendering the death of a thousand cuts to the complacency of status quo thinking. What some call heresy others will certainly call genius. A paradigm/mind-set/game changer." Robert Steele #1 Amazon.com reviewer for non-fiction

"If Howard Bloom is only 10 percent right, we'll have to drastically revise our notions of the universe. There's no mysticism in The God Problem-- no God, no religion, no incommunicable spiritual insights -- just the contagious joy of a great mind set loose on the biggest intellectual puzzles humans have ever faced. Whether you're a scientist or a hyper-curious layperson, Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, National Magazine Award Winner

"The God Problem will change your life. Here's the thing you need to understand about reading a Howard Bloom book. While reading it you'll find yourself analyzing yourself and the world around you in ways you never imagined. Bloom presents his reader with tools for understanding and interpreting human phenomena. He creates new connections you've never seen before in works that somehow combine science, history, philosophy, art, a mystical atheism, and joyous Baby Boomer optimism into a new nonfiction genre.

"Having read Bloom's three previous published books (and some of his unpublished gems too radical and honest for castrated publishers to even dare...) I've seen a progression in his work. He's getting deeper and deeper to the roots of human self-knowledge and the codes embedded within the universe's construction.

"These ideas will make you see yourself differently. Just take Howard's explanation of how something emerges out of nothingness -- his secret of why A is not A will change your life if you make the mistake of thinking about it too long and taking its implications all the way. Just as The Lucifer Principle will change the way you understand the evil in your heart; Global Brain will make you understand your role in steering the ships of mass minds; and Genius of the Beast will give you a chance to read the last page of the human drama so you can relax.

"Didn't get the memo that the boom and bust pattern we're so worried about in our economy goes back throughout human history and even deeper back into nature? That it's just a tool to provoke us to evolve? I say mistake because the error you make in reading Howard Bloom now is that you're gaining a revolutionary understanding of the world that won't be more commonplace for at least 10-15 years. One that will confound the intellectual idolaters of dogmatic political ideologies 'right' and 'left.' (I've found that partisans of both sides don't know what to make of a Bloom-style reading of the economic crisis.)

"And The God Problem is even worse regarding the power it puts in your hands to provoke others and yourself to dig deeper and see your life as though you were looking at it for the first time. Just try laying out Bloom-style arguments when the subject comes up and watch what happens. It's usually a lot of fun provoking people to remember how to think again." David Swindle, Associate Editor, PJ Media

Edition details

• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 161614551X
• ISBN 13: 9781616145514
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 708