The Rigor of Angels - Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

Informationen zum Autor WILLIAM EGGINTON is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of multiple books, including How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher’s Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind (2018), and The Rigor of Angels (2023), which explores the respective conceptions of reality in the thought of Borges, Kant, and Heisenberg. He is co-author with David Castillo of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022). His next book, on the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, will be published in 2024. Klappentext "An account of how a poet, a physicist, and a philosopher pursued truth to the very limits of human apprehension and revealed the fundamental nature of our place in the universe. Spiraling in the wreckage of a failed love affair, Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges channeled his devastation into his work, reassessing the slippery nature of our own identities and the way we perceive reality, ultimately securing his place in the literary pantheon. Doggedly fighting against the scientific establishment for his controversial interpretation of quantum mechanics, German physicist Werner Heisenberg dared to accept the experimental evidence at face value, leading him to a principle that has been a guiding light for physicists ever since. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, horrified by the possibility that all knowledge might rest on uncertain grounds, undertook to test the limits of reason, placing human understanding on a firmer footing than ever before. What these three thinkers shared, in addition to their uncommon intellect, was their skepticism-not only of the accepted wisdom of their culture, but also of their own reasoning. What set them apart was their willingness to submit their ideas to the same rigor they would bring to someone else's. In so doing, they made extraordinary leaps in answering some of the most enduring questions about the nature of reality-about the flow of time in human consciousness, about the origins and nature of the universe, but most importantly, about the possibility of coming to know reality as it is itself. In an era like ours, in which dogma of all kinds seems to rule the day, the story of these thinkers serves as a crucial reminder that maverick thinking demands submitting our intuitions and even our own deeply held beliefs to the cold light of reason. In their lives and work we recognize that the mysteries of our place in the world may always loom over us, not as a threat, but as a reminder of our humble humanity"-- Leseprobe 1 UNFORGETTABLE   It was only midmorning on April 13, 1929, but Solomon Shereshevsky was already having a bad day. The journalist had just attended the daily editorial meeting of his Moscow newspaper when his section editor called him into his office. What was Shereshevsky playing at? his agitated superior asked him. Why did he just stare at the editor while he ran over the day’s stories? Was he too full of himself to take notes like all the other reporters?   Nonplussed, Shereshevsky explained that he didn’t need to take notes, because he remembered everything the editor said. Then he proceeded to recite the entire meeting back to him. Verbatim.   By that afternoon Shereshevsky found himself amid a gaggle of psychiatrists at the Academy of Communist Educat...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: William Egginton
• Editore: Pantheon Schocken Books
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 29.08.2023
• EAN: 9780593316306
• ISBN: 978-0-593-31630-6
• Pagine: 368
• Dimensioni: 163 mm x 242 mm x 33 mm
• Categorie: Narrativa > Romanzi; Saggistica > Filosofia, religione > Filosofia: tematiche generali, opere di consultazione