Epistemology

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to make your ideas stick. “Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book.”—The...

A leading astronomer and gifted teacher takes readers on a wondrous tour of how science confronts the big questions—about the universe’s origins, destiny, and fundamental nature—and how it contends with the limits of our knowledge Humans have learned a lot about the world around us and the...

A seminal work of scientific and philosophical exploration. Ever since the Greeks coined the language we commonly use for scientific description, mythology and science have developed separately. But what if we could prove that all myths have one common origin in a celestial cosmology?

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks, where does the self come from -- and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants—gives us a work of visionary importance that...

Epistemic vices are character traits, attitudes, or thinking styles that prevent us from gaining, keeping, or sharing knowledge. In this book, Quassim Cassam gives an account of the nature and importance of these vices, which include closed-mindedness, intellectual arrogance, wishful thinking...

'Terrific and passionate writing about a philosopher whose heroism is unquestionable . . . and as lively and learned an introduction to classical Athens as you could want' - Daily Telegraph In The Hemlock Cup, award-winning historian Bettany Hughes brings to vivid life one of the most...

Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge. Without knowledge, scientific enquiry is meaningless and we can’t analyse the world around us....

New insights from the science of science.... Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that Pluto was a planet. For decades, we were convinced that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short...

This reissue of Thomas Sowell’s classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed....

For fans of Eckhart Tolle—a guide to mastering self-awareness through direct experience rather than old presumptions or harmful thought patterns Through decades of martial arts and meditation practice, Peter Ralston discovered a curious and paradoxical fact: that true awareness arises from a...

On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic is an 1887 work by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interconnected essays that expand on concepts Nietzsche first raised in Beyond Good and Evil (1886)....

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is a towering figure of modern Western philosophy, someone whose thought continues to exert an influence across all areas of the discipline. His work is characterized by both breadth and unity: he writes powerfully about mind, epistemology, metaphysics, logic...

Kant's Prolegomena, although a small book, is without doubt the most important of his writings, writes the translator, Paul Carus. Prolegomena means, literally, prefatory or introductory remarks, and it furnishes us with a key to his main work, The Critique of Pure Reason; in fact, it is an...

Credited as the Father of Liberalism and revered for his ground-breaking theories, John Locke left behind a legacy which has radically shaped political and philosophical thought for over 300 years....

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives - to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new...

You can stock your life with important work, relationships, activities, and art, and yet still ask: what's the point of it all? Almost every thinking person has asked that question―many more than once. Granted, you're more likely to worry about the point of life when things aren't going well...

In a letter of 1932, Karl Popper described Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie–The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge–as ‘…a child of crises, above all of …the crisis of physics.' Finally available in English, it is a major contribution to the philosophy of...

In an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others? While many forms of leisure meet these needs, Zena Hitz writes, few experiences are so...

Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console...

This gripping collection features the ideologies of Ted Kaczynski, as found in 'Industrial Society and Its Future,' and includes an original biography chronicling his life up to his death on June 10th, 2023....

Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers - in all walks of life - delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers....

For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another....

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain a happy, tranquil life, characterized by peace and freedom from fear....

A contrarian argues that modern physicists' obsession with beauty has given us wonderful math but bad science....

Without any of the sugarcoating often found in the modern hyper-positive self-help genres, Robert Pantano attempts to provide the value of motivation and personal development through unwavering philosophical honesty. Studying and pulling from ideas in Stoicism, Existentialism, Nihilism...

We are all living an existence that none of us chose and none of us truly understand. Naturally, everything can—at times—feel strange, chaotic, and overwhelming. The Art of Living an Absurd Existence helps us find peace with this; it instructs us on how to embrace and appreciate the mystery...

What if everything you thought you knew about existence was hiding a disturbing truth? Every time you eat, you perform an act of destruction. Every breath you take requires the transformation of prior structure. Every thought in your mind has a physical cost. This is not philosophy or metaphor. It is thermodynamic law. In this groundbreaking work, Boris Kriger presents a unified theory of persistence that reveals why existence itself has a cost, and why that cost must be paid in transformed structure.

We live in a world that is not quite "right." The central tenet of statistical inquiry is that Observation = Truth + Error because even the most careful of scientific investigations have always been bedeviled by uncertainty. Our attempts to measure things are plagued with small errors. Our...

"Is Shakespeare Dead?" by Mark Twain is a reflective and satirical treatise on the authorship of Shakespeare’s works, written during the early 20th century. In this work, Twain grapples with long-standing debates over who truly wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, questioning the...

Nobody needs to control you. They just need to know which emotional levers to pull. Fear. Anger. Outrage. Belonging. These are the levers of modern influence—and they are pulled thousands of times a day by media systems designed to optimize engagement, not understanding. Cognitive Self-Defense is a skeptical field guide for anyone who wants to stop being steered.

What was before the universe? If space is expanding, what is it expanding into? Where did all the matter come from to form planets, stars, and oceans? What is nothing? And if none of these questions can be answered, why do we keep asking them? The Pointless Book asks the biggest questions human beings have ever conceived. The kind of questions that keep you awake at three in the morning. The kind that feel like they should have answers but never do. This book tries to answer them. It reaches for quantum physics, simulation theory, cosmology, philosophy, and religion.

You can stock your life with important work, relationships, activities, and art, and yet still ask: what's the point of it all? Almost every thinking person has asked that question―many more than once. Granted, you're more likely to worry about the point of life when things aren't going well...

Why does a colleague's promotion disturb us more than our own stalled career? Why do capuchin monkeys reject perfectly good food after watching another monkey receive something better? Why might artificial intelligence systems develop competitive behaviors they were never programmed to have? The Anatomy of Envy presents a unified theory of one of the most pervasive yet least understood phenomena in psychology: the disturbance that arises from perceiving oneself as disadvantaged relative to others.

You chose breakfast this morning the same way you choose everything else. The same pattern you use to pick what to eat is the one you use to evaluate a career, assess a relationship, respond to a crisis, or judge an argument. You have one way of navigating trade-offs, and you apply it everywhere because inventing a new approach for every new situation would require resources no human mind possesses. This is not a flaw. It is the most efficient strategy available to any system operating with limited means in an unlimited world.