The Big Picture
On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
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Narrated by:
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Sean Carroll
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By:
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Sean Carroll
About this listen
Does human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific worldview?
Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
In short chapters filled with intriguing historical anecdotes, personal asides, and rigorous exposition, listeners learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level - and then how each connects to the other. Carroll's presentation of the principles that have guided the scientific revolution - from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe - is dazzlingly unique.
Carroll shows how an avalanche of discoveries in the past few hundred years has changed our world and what really matters to us. Our lives are dwarfed like never before by the immensity of space and time, but they are redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning.
The Big Picture is an unprecedented scientific worldview, a tour de force that will be listened to alongside the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and E. O. Wilson for years to come.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2016 Sean Carroll (P)2016 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
Included on Brain Picking’s “The Greatest Science Books of 2016” List and included on NPR Science Friday’s “The Best Science Books of 2016” List
“Weaving the threads of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and philosophy into a seamless narrative tapestry, Sean Carroll enthralls us with what we’ve figured out in the universe and humbles us with what we don’t yet understand. Yet in the end, it’s the meaning of it all that feeds your soul of curiosity.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey)
“With profound intelligence and lucid, unpretentious language, Sean Carroll beautifully articulates the worldview suggested by contemporary naturalism. Thorny issues like free will, the direction of time, and the source of morality are clarified with elegance and insight. The Big Picture shows how the scientific worldview enriches our understanding of the universe and ourselves. A reliable account of our knowledge of the universe, it is also a serene meditation on our need for meaning. This is a book that should be read by everybody.” (Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics)
"Vivid...impressive....Splendidly informative." (The New York Times Book Review)
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What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally stop to ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time. The phenomenon - the ability of one particle to affect another instantly across the vastness of space - appears to be almost magical.
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Rambling but Asks Good Questions
- By Michael on 12-19-15
By: George Musser
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The Grand Biocentric Design
- How Life Creates Reality
- By: Robert Lanza, Matej Pavšič
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
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What is consciousness? Why are we here? Where did it all come from - the laws of nature, the stars, the universe? Humans have been asking these questions forever, but science hasn't succeeded in providing many answers - until now. In The Grand Biocentric Design, Robert Lanza, one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People", is joined by theoretical physicist Matej Pavšic and astronomer Bob Berman to shed light on the big picture that has long eluded philosophers and scientists alike.
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Should be in the fiction section.
- By Frank on 12-29-20
By: Robert Lanza, and others
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Science and the Akashic Field
- An Integral Theory of Everything
- By: Ervin Laszlo
- Narrated by: Tom Pile
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic field is real and has its equivalent in science's zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness.
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A must-read about ultimate nature of reality
- By Alexandra Hopkins on 04-15-18
By: Ervin Laszlo
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The Science of Discworld
- A Novel
- By: Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
- Narrated by: Michael Fenton Stevens, Stephen Briggs
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
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Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.
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Not the best Pratchett, but gets there in the end
- By Rachel on 07-30-14
By: Terry Pratchett, and others
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Undeniable
- How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
- By: Douglas Axe
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
- By Rafael Vila on 10-08-16
By: Douglas Axe
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Where the Conflict Really Lies
- Science, Religion, & Naturalism
- By: Alvin Plantinga
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates - the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but with little consensus emerging. Plantinga, as a top philosopher but also a proponent of the rationality of religious belief, has a unique contribution to make. His theme in this short book is that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.
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The reader makes or breaks an audiobook.
- By Alec on 02-16-15
By: Alvin Plantinga
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Knocking on Heaven's Door
- How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World
- By: Lisa Randall
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
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The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall.
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Too Political
- By Allan on 12-14-11
By: Lisa Randall
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The Trouble with Physics
- The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
- By: Lee Smolin
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
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In this illuminating book, the renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that fundamental physics - the search for the laws of nature - is losing its way. Ambitious ideas about extra dimensions, exotic particles, multiple universes, and strings have captured the publics imagination -- and the imagination of experts.
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Strings snipped
- By J B Tipton on 06-06-10
By: Lee Smolin
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The Quantum and the Lotus
- A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet
- By: Matthieu Ricard, Trinh Xuan Thuan
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
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When Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Thuan met at an academic conference in the summer of 1997, they began discussing the many remarkable connections between the teachings of Buddhism and the findings of recent science. That conversation grew into an astonishing correspondence exploring a series of fascinating questions. Did the universe have a beginning? Might our perception of time in fact be an illusion, a phenomenon created in our brains that has no ultimate reality? What is consciousness and how did it evolve?
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The
- By willmit on 05-02-21
By: Matthieu Ricard, and others
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The World According to Physics
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Jim Al-Khalili
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
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Shining a light on the most profound insights revealed by modern physics, Jim Al-Khalili invites us all to understand what this crucially important science tells us about the universe and the nature of reality itself. Al-Khalili begins by introducing the fundamental concepts of space, time, energy, and matter, and then describes the three pillars of modern physics - quantum theory, relativity, and thermodynamics - showing how all three must come together if we are ever to have a full understanding of reality.
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excellent book
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-21
By: Jim Al-Khalili
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Paradox
- The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
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Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. With elegant explanations that bring the listener inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.
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Almost Useless
- By Michael on 06-19-19
By: Jim Al-Khalili
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Until the End of Time
- Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
- By: Brian Greene
- Narrated by: Brian Greene
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
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Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.
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Uneven
- By NJ on 03-03-20
By: Brian Greene
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Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Jeff Crawford
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
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Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
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Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
- By LongerILiveLessIKnow on 11-14-13
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This book & Greene's analogies connected Qs to As
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Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason, or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.
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We are for a short time.
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The Elegant Universe
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In a rare blend of scientific insight and writing as elegant as the theories it explains, Brian Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away the layers of mystery surrounding string theory to reveal a universe that consists of 11 dimensions where the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all matter-from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas-is generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny loops of energy.
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Well Written, Good Narration
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What listeners say about The Big Picture
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- El Bruno tal
- 06-20-20
True to its title
Engaging and accessible, this book provides an overview of many topics related to what we know about the nature of the universe.
I cannot emphasize enough, how interesting this book is. I listened to the whole thing without even noticing. Sean Carroll delivers one fascinating topic after another, to the point that he can really get to satisfy your curiosity in your most philosophical moments.
I left some room for improvement in the delivery. I think it becomes too much lecturing for my taste. But this is a small thing.
The book has its effect and it gives perspective as well.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Gonzalo Alberto Gomez A
- 11-04-16
Great book for everyone that wants to introduce themselves in physical concepts
I truly recommend to everyone that's will try to read or hear this book to be open minded to the different concepts that are postulated here.
Gonzalo
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-17-17
Bring the Cosmos to you
The material is amazing and the way the book brings you through the journey of philosophy and physics is enjoyable and thought provoking. Highly recommend this. I have gone back and listened to some sections multiple times because it's so informative. It's also nice to have the author reading it to you.
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- Ryan
- 11-08-17
great book by a great intellectual
loved it the man puts complicated subjects into understandable reading. A must read for any science lover.
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- Bruce
- 12-18-17
Deep, broad, fascinating
Would you consider the audio edition of The Big Picture to be better than the print version?
Having only engaged the audio version, I'll give it a big yes since I listen while commuting. Also, since it's narrated by the author, he always speaks in the appropriate tone and cadence, something I might've gotten wrong from time to time in reading to myself.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Big Picture?
I think it's a testament to the quality of the book that I enjoyed vast swaths of it. It's full of ideas soundly and interestingly argued. Including some I'd never considered.
Any additional comments?
The author would benefit from a pronunciation coach for some biological terms (that's my area, so the rare error jumped out) but as presented, it was perfectly clear what he was talking about. I generally don't favor authors reading their own works, as I believe these to be separate skills, but I believe Sean Carroll is strong in both areas (also, presumably, the Physics that's his day job!).
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- Mike
- 12-17-18
Great Book
Wasn’t sure I would enjoy this book as I started out, but on balance it was a great read. Learned a lot on lots of different topics.
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- Your Old Pal Sisco
- 01-16-17
This was wonderful
It's a big project (no titular pun intended) to combine theology, philosophy, physics, history,and probability and have it work toward a meaningful end. But this book does it. Well done.
The highest compliment I can pay it is that I will definitely be going back through large portions of it a second time, once I've finished digesting the initial listen.
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- J2 Parker
- 12-22-19
Great on Science, Junk on Theology.
Great on Science, Junk on Theology. Plus, text to meet review software's fifteen words requirement.
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- Jared Beach
- 09-18-22
It was very cool learning about the Big Picture, and the things we have no idea about
It was a long book, however it was extremely interesting and I enjoyed it. I think I got 1 more time run at this book to catch all the things I missed
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- juansgaitan
- 01-29-23
The best big picture explanation imho
The best big picture explanation in my humble opinion. From the mysteries of quantum physics to the emergence of consciousness, morals and ethics.
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