The Island of Knowledge
The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning
Hardcover, 335 pages, Perseus Books Group, List Price: $29.99 | purchase
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Book Summary
A natural philosophy expert who is also a physics and astronomy professor discusses the limits of scientific explanations and how our knowledge of the universe and its nature will always remain necessarily incomplete. 15,000 first printing.
NPR stories about The Island of Knowledge
All of our scientific tools have limits. These limits ensure that we will never see the whole picture. We can never have complete knowledge of the universe. Above, the ESO's APEX radio telescope probes the heavens from its lonely perch on Chile's Chajnantor plateau. Gordon Gillet/ESO hide caption
In the quest to understand our world and the universe in which it sits, Marcelo Gleiser advises: "Not all questions have answers. To hope that science will answer all questions is to want to shrink the human spirit, clip its wings, rob it from its multifaceted existence." Goddard/Arizona State University/NASA hide caption
