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Book Cover for: The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics, Steven E. Landsburg

The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Steven E. Landsburg

In the wake of his enormously popular books The Armchair Economist and More Sex Is Safer Sex, Slate columnist and economics professor Steven Landsburg employs concepts from mathematics, economics, and physics in this sprightly tour of the deepest problems in philosophy: What is real? What can we know? Why is there something instead of nothing? And how should we live?

Beginning with the broadest philosophical issues--theories of existence, knowledge, and ethics--Landsburg then turns to a dazzling variety of specific applications. He gives us a mathematical analysis for arguments for the existence of God; explains the real meanings of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Gödel's incompleteness theorem; and carefully dissects the meaning of social responsibility on the playground, in the marketplace, and in the voting booth.

Stimulating, illuminating, and always surprising, The Big Questions reveals the relationship between the loftiest philosophical quests and our everyday lives.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Free Press
  • Publish Date: Oct 19th, 2010
  • Pages: 288
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.50in - 5.50in - 0.75in - 0.55lb
  • EAN: 9781439148228
  • Categories: Ethics & Moral PhilosophyEconomics - Macroeconomics

About the Author

Landsburg, Steven E.: - Steven E. Landsburg is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester. He is the author of More Sex Is Safer Sex and The Big Questions. He has written for Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate. He lives in Rochester, New York.

More books by Steven E. Landsburg

Book Cover for: The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life, Steven E. Landsburg
Book Cover for: Can You Outsmart an Economist?: 100+ Puzzles to Train Your Brain, Steven E. Landsburg
Book Cover for: The People Paradox: Does the World Have Too Many or Too Few People?, Stephen Davies University of Auckland
Book Cover for: More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, Steven E. Landsburg
Book Cover for: Price Theory and Applications (Tenth Edition), Steven E. Landsburg
Book Cover for: Understanding Time and Space, Steven E. Landsburg

Praise for this book

"In "The Big Questions", Steven Landsburg ventures far beyond his usual domain to take on questions in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. . . . [T]his must make Steven Landsburg history's most courageous mathematician because for Landsburg mathematical abstractions are not like Mount Everest, rather Mount Everest is a mathematical abstraction. Indeed, for Landsburg, it's math all the way down--math is what exists and what exists is math, A=A. Read the book for more on this view, which is as good as any metaphysics that has ever been and a far sight better than most." -- MarginalRevolution.com
"Steven E. Landsburg's latest book of economic brain teasers resembles one of those Hanayama metal puzzles that you're supposed to pull apart: They drive me crazy, yet I can't put them down. Landsburg is the University of Rochester professor who brought us "The Armchair Economist" and "More Sex Is Safer Sex".... In "The Big Questions", he attempts something more ambitious and slightly less flip: to sum up his ideas about 'the nature of reality, the basis of knowledge and the foundations of ethics."' Be prepared for a diverting journey into the maze of one man's mind, a supply-and-demand version of the movie "Being John Malkovich." -- "Bloomburg News"
""The Big Questions" is a funky book, like an intellectual roller coaster ride through some of the most fascinating ideas in science, math and economics. These are the ideas, says the author - a University of Rochester professor of economics - that unlock the most perplexing mysteries in philosophy and life, in general. His book is a thought provoking blast." -- David Henderson