Why Does The World
Exist? One Man's Quest for the Big Answer
Jim Holt
Profile Books, £8.99
This surprisingly short and highly engaging book by Jim Holt, New Yorker essayist and philosopher, is based on one of the biggest questions posed by humanity; why we, collectively and individually, exist. And he seems to have had great fun looking for the answer, too.
Looking through the histories of quantum physics, scientific cosmology and philosophy, Holt sets out to find out why there is something rather than nothing, turning a voyage across a potential existential minefield into a ramble through the universe’s possibilities.
Along the way he talks to eight thinkers – all men – in Oxford, Paris, London, Texas and Philadelphia, enquiring on the beginnings of the universe, whether created by a deity or by a Big Bang singularity.
Holt also recounts the touching tale of his own mother’s passing, bringing the big cosmic question back to the personal and individual.
You’ll need your thinking cap on for this one, but you’ll be repaid with stuff that’s really worth thinking about.
