In The Big Questions, Steven Landsburg—Slate columnist, professor of economics and mathematics, and author of the enormously popular More Sex is Safer Sex—takes us on a sprightly tour of the deepest problems in philosophy, using ideas from mathematics, economics, and physics to light the way.

With his classic book The Armchair Economist, Steven Landsburg was the first academic to make economics lively,  accessible, and fun for the general reader.  Beloved and widely renowned for his witty, razor-sharp and logically rigorous style, Landsburg branches out in this, his fourth book, into the disciplines  of mathematics and physics, disciplines he loves for their beauty, their clarity, and their ability to reveal profound and indisputable truths.  With these as a guide, he takes us on a provocative and entertaining journey through the questions that have preoccupied philosophers throughout the ages.

Beginning with the broadest philosophical issues—theories of existence, knowledge and ethics—Landsburg then turns to a dazzling variety of specific applications. He gives us a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God, explains the real meanings of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Godel’s incompleteness theorem, and carefully dissects the meaning of social responsibility on the playground, in the marketplace, and in the voting booth.

Stimulating, illuminating, and always surprising, The Big Questions reveals the relationship between the loftiest philosophical questions and our everyday lives.

 Print