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The Romance of Reality
- How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
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Publisher's summary
Why do we exist? For centuries, this question was the sole province of religion and philosophy. But now science is ready to take a seat at the table.
According to the prevailing scientific paradigm, the universe tends toward randomness; it functions according to laws without purpose, and the emergence of life is an accident devoid of meaning.
But this bleak interpretation of nature is currently being challenged by cutting-edge findings at the intersection of physics, biology, neuroscience, and information theory—generally referred to as “complexity science”. Thanks to a new understanding of evolution, as well as recent advances in our understanding of the phenomenon known as emergence, a new cosmic narrative is taking shape: Nature’s simplest “parts” come together to form ever-greater “wholes” in a process that has no end in sight.
In The Romance of Reality, cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains the science behind this new view of reality and explores what it means for all of us. In engaging, accessible prose, Azarian outlines the fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics at the heart of the old assumptions about the universe’s evolution, and shows us the evidence that suggests that the universe is a “self-organizing” system, one that is moving toward increasing complexity and awareness.
Cosmologist and science communicator Carl Sagan once said of humanity that “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself”. The Romance of Reality shows that this poetic statement in fact rests on a scientific foundation and gives us a new way to know the cosmos, along with a riveting vision of life that imbues existence with meaning—nothing supernatural required.
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- By NJ on 03-03-20
By: Brian Greene
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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
- Unabridged
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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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A Beginner’s Guide to Reality
- Exploring Our Everyday Adventures in Wonderland
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A unique fusion of philosophy and metaphysics set against the backdrop of contemporary culture. Have you ever wondered if the world is really there when you're not looking? We tend to take the reality of our world very much for granted. This book will lead you down the rabbit hole in search of something we can point to, hang our hats on, and say this is real.
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A real great listen on the nature of reality
- By Patrick Mabry, Jr. on 07-30-14
By: Jim Baggott
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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The Landscape of History
- How Historians Map the Past
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
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Excellent Book!
- By Billy on 09-15-18
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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
- Unabridged
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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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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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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
- Unabridged
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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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Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Jeff Crawford
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Our Mathematical Universe
- My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
- By: Max Tegmark
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.
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Wow!
- By Michael on 02-02-14
By: Max Tegmark
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Quantum Enigma
- Physics Encounters Consciousness
- By: Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science and the basis of one-third of our economy. They found, to their embarrassment, that with their theory, physics encounters consciousness. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all this in nontechnical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, emphasizing what is and what is not speculation.
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Wow. Very Informative and mind boggling.
- By Kevin Harper, Realtor on 08-11-17
By: Bruce Rosenblum, and others
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Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
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Bleh!!
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A book that could have been an email
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Separating the Science from the Nonsense
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About halfway through, it became propaganda
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Something Deeply Hidden
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Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
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The Best Layperson Book on Quantum Physics
- By Conrad Barski on 09-11-19
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The Case Against Reality
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Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.
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Don't buy - visual examples missing, no pdf
- By Richard Pickett on 08-26-19
By: Donald Hoffman
What listeners say about The Romance of Reality
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Scott
- 10-21-22
this is what schools should be teaching
I particularly like the way the book ropes in all of the disciplines all of the state of the art theories breaks them down into a nuts and bolts how does this fit into the puzzle or not leaving you with a very clear picture of the most modern state in which we find ourselves and science
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- Cameron Preston Kruger
- 03-05-24
A Speculative Science/Spirituality
Azarian does a good job summarizing and explaining the current thinking of many contemporary scientists who embrace a new scientific spirituality based on a model of a computational universe. However, many of these theories are inherently not falsifiable and therefore are speculative and destined to remain so.
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- Elliott
- 01-11-23
Simply mind-blowing.
I don't know for another work like this. It's very dense and draws on a lot of works.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Karl Frank
- 10-13-22
2/3rds great
The first two parts were great. the third part got to be very subjective. however I agree with the basic premise of the book, just slightly different supports.
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- Nolan ramsey
- 08-04-22
Excellent book on the understanding of the human experience and function of the universe.
Cant recommend enough. If possible, I would recommend listening to Visionary by Graham Hancock, and The immortality Key by Brian Muraresku before embarking into this. These books give a solid understanding of the roots of human consciousness leading to where we are today without too much esoteric speech.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-11-22
Reality Redefined with New Epistemic Findings!
Excellent book! For a sequel or prequel, but definitely a must, read/listen to The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution by futurist and evolutionary cyberneticist Alex M. Vikoulov where you'll find many confirmations as well as additional insights and fresh perspectives.
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- ELIAS ANDERSON
- 01-17-23
The great awakening revealed
Finally an intelligent person who was able to articulate all of the discoveries of silence and combine them into a single theory of everything This book we'll change your life and Mr. Arzarian is a prophet of the universe!
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- RT740
- 03-21-23
A Monumental Work! (If you are fortunate to grasp it).
After reading close to 300 books over the past decade on various domains in Science, I would say this book was a watershed moment for me in terms of perspective. It needs a familiarity with concepts in evolution, neuroscience, Bayesian model and quantum theory else you only see the tip of the iceberg. I found nuggets of wisdom in almost every other page and for someone like me that reads a lot of books on these topics, that’s a big statement.
What a debut. I hope Bobby Azarian writes more books.
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- dmh00000
- 01-01-24
The single best complexity science book yet
Wow! I’ve had a 30+yr fascination with complexity science since reading Gleick’s Chaos in 1987 and this was the greatest so far.
For me personally I’m not sure I could have fully appreciated this book without some understanding of complexity science (I’ve probably read 22 books on the subject over 30yrs) but that’s me. For smarter folks this could be a perfect place to start and I would discourage no one to start here.
The book was still a mighty but extremely rewarding challenge.
For anyone who has read complexity science books like Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex System, Butterfly Economics: A New General Theory of Social and Economic Behavior or many others you find that elements of complexity science or complex adaptive systems are well explained but a unifying truly scientific theory that ties it all together is missing.
For me Romance of Reality did just that and did it beautifully.
All that said this was not an easy read/listen, requiring me to playback sections many times over and over again. At times I was extremely frustrated trying to grasp a concept that seemed unrelated or too difficult to comprehend.
The audio version was excellent. While there is certain material, especially scientific, that doesn’t lend itself to audio, Romance of Reality actually did.
Muscle through this listen and you’ll walk away with a (maybe not *the*) unifying theory of the big (universe, galaxies, civilizations) and small (molecular, atomic) that explains how and why we got here.
I hope others read this and review it.
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- Trevor W. Lines
- 01-04-23
Brilliant book, except for the author’s examination of free will.
Explaining all of life and natural phenomena through the lens of energy gradients, self organization, and the emergence of complexity is a profound feat and beautiful novel frame.
Where the author goes wrong is in his “debunking” of the illusion of free will. The explanation given is that there are top down causal processes that moves an organism in a direction of choice or goals. What the author fails to realize is that those top down processes are also controlled at the atomic level by emergent complexity.
While our subjective experience is surely one of free will and it can be harnessed to move people towards better lives, there are also many damaging aspects to this view such as resultant judgements of self and others, energy wasted on regret, and our appallingly terrible criminal justice system.
Better to live with the paradox of subjective free will and it’s objective absence than to claim free will exists with literally no evidence and a thin argument. Paradoxes exist everywhere. Let’s embrace the genius of the “and” rather than arguing on either/or.
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