Why We are Free. This item is unavailable.Why We are Free

In his book Cosmogenesis, David Layzer showed that the universe had not begun, as many physical scientists believe, with a large amount of information and order that is slowly being destroyed by the increasing entropy and disorder demanded by the second law of thermodynamics. Instead of approaching a "heat death," the universe began in a state of maximum disorder, with a primordial randomness that is a new source of objective indeterminacy. The growth of order in the universe is seen in the creation of atoms and molecules as well as the creation and evolution of the planets, stars, and galaxies. In this, his last book, Why We are Free, Layzer sees the origin and evolution of the living world as the result of Ernst Mayr's two-step creative process, with randomness in the first step and natural selection determining the outcome. Layzer's libertarian free will also comes in two stages, as described by William James, the first is the chance generation of alternative possibilities, the second is the deliberative decision and choice that selects one possibility, making it actual, an act of self-determination. Layzer's unified scientific worldview shows how cosmic evolution fits comfortably with biological evolution and with the traditional view of free will, which holds that we are the authors of actions that help shape the future. Why We are Free also fits nicely with Albert Einstein's view that our physical theories are "free creations of the human mind."

David Layzer was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on December 31, 1925. Both his parents immigrated from Poland after WWI and met in the US. His father, a doctor, introduced him to the director of the Warner-Swasey Observatory in Cleveland, who encouraged David to apply to Harvard. David applied, was accepted and enrolled in 1943. After three semesters, he was drafted into the army in support of the war effort and spent two years in the Signal Corps. He then returned to Harvard and graduated in 1947 with a degree in mathematics. He enrolled in the graduate program in astronomy at Harvard and received a PhD degree in 1950, having written his thesis under Donald Menzel on theoretical calculations of atomic spectra. After postdoctoral positions at Michigan, Berkeley and Princeton he joined the faculty of the Astronomy Department at Harvard in 1953. He was tenured in 1959, and appointed the first Donald H. Menzel Chair of Astrophysics in 1979, a position he held until his retirement in 1997 at age 73.