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The Fabric of Reality
- The Science of Parallel Universes - and Its Implications
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Science & Engineering, Science
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The Beginning of Infinity
- Explanations That Transform the World
- Written by: David Deutsch
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 20 hrs
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A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe.
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enlightening book
- By Mark on 2019-08-11
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The Emperor's New Mind
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In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. The book's central concern is what philosophers call the "mind-body problem". Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness.
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quite an adventure !
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Sam Harris - neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author - has been exploring some of the most important questions about the human mind, society, and current events on his podcast, Making Sense. This audiobook includes a dozen of the best conversations from Making Sense, including talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically. Together they shine a light on what it means to “make sense” in the modern world.
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Great Guests from the Podcast
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The Myth of the Framework
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In a career spanning 60 years, Sir Karl Popper has made some of the most important contributions to the 20th century discussion of science and rationality. The Myth of the Framework is a collection of some of Popper's most important material on this subject.
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The Fabric of the Cosmos
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Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?
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Fantastic in any quantum reality!
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Being You
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What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.
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Excellent book!
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The Beginning of Infinity
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- Written by: David Deutsch
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 20 hrs
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A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe.
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enlightening book
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Written by: David Deutsch
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The Emperor's New Mind
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In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. The book's central concern is what philosophers call the "mind-body problem". Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness.
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quite an adventure !
- By Michel Chehata on 2020-06-30
Written by: Roger Penrose
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Making Sense
- Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity
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Sam Harris - neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author - has been exploring some of the most important questions about the human mind, society, and current events on his podcast, Making Sense. This audiobook includes a dozen of the best conversations from Making Sense, including talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically. Together they shine a light on what it means to “make sense” in the modern world.
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Great Guests from the Podcast
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The Myth of the Framework
- In Defence of Science and Rationality
- Written by: Karl Popper
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- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
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In a career spanning 60 years, Sir Karl Popper has made some of the most important contributions to the 20th century discussion of science and rationality. The Myth of the Framework is a collection of some of Popper's most important material on this subject.
Written by: Karl Popper
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The Fabric of the Cosmos
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Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?
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Fantastic in any quantum reality!
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What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.
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Excellent book!
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The secret to better decision-making is learning things that won’t change. Mastering a small number of versatile concepts with broad applicability enables you to rapidly grasp new areas, identify patterns, and understand how the world works. Don’t waste your time on knowledge with an expiry date - focus on the fundamentals.
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Own the audiobook and hardcover
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Today we are blessed with two extraordinarily successful theories of physics. The first is Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes the large-scale behavior of matter in a curved spacetime. The second is quantum mechanics. This theory describes the properties and behavior of matter and radiation at their smallest scales.
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Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
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This playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics briskly explains Einstein's general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the Universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. Carlo Rovelli, a renowned theoretical physicist, is a delightfully poetic and philosophical scientific guide. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: To the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, back to the origins of the cosmos, and into the workings of our minds.
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Good information but did not enjoy the presentatio
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The Janus Point
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In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time - and shapes the destiny of the universe.
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One of our great contemporary scientists reveals the 10 profound insights that illuminate what everyone should know about the physical world.
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Loved this book
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The Case Against Reality
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Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.
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Accompanying PDF?
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Our Mathematical Universe
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Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.
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A deeply engaging look at our universe(s).
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The Great Mental Models, Volume 2
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You'll not only get a better understanding of the forces that influence the world around you, but you'll learn how to direct those forces to create outsized advantages in the areas of your life that matter most to you.
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Terrific book
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Your Brain Is a Time Machine
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In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.
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Ok
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Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
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In Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin provides an accessible overview of the attempts to build a final "theory of everything." He explains in simple terms what scientists are talking about when they say the world is made from exotic entities such as loops, strings, and black holes and tells the fascinating stories behind these discoveries: the rivalries, epiphanies, and intrigues he witnessed firsthand.
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Thank you for this book
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Written by: Lee Smolin
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Helgoland
- Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution
- Written by: Carlo Rovelli, Erica Segre - translator, Simon Carnell - translator
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- Unabridged
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One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution.
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understandable, thought-provoking
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Written by: Carlo Rovelli, and others
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Billions & Billions
- Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
- Written by: Carl Sagan
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Ann Druyan
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century?
Written by: Carl Sagan
Publisher's Summary
Author of the New York Times best seller The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch, explores the four most fundamental strands of human knowledge: quantum physics, and the theories of knowledge, computation, and evolution - and their unexpected connections. Taken together, these four strands reveal a deeply integrated, rational, and optimistic worldview. It describes a unified fabric of reality that is objective and comprehensible, in which human action and thought are central.
With new preface exclusive to the audiobook, read by the author.
More from the same
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What listeners say about The Fabric of Reality
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Hossein
- 2021-08-07
Deep discussion changing your views
This narrative definitely adds many perspectives to your understanding of reality.
Some chapters need to be revisited for better understanding.
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- Dennis A Robinson
- 2019-03-20
Great introduction! The topics are extensively dea
Great introduction! The topics are extensively dealt with.
I sure wish I knew more math.
Sniffin' sixty and feel like I've missed so much. But with retirement comes time.
lol. Time indeed.
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- Philip Cziao
- 2019-01-27
Such a disappointment
If you happen to find the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum reality to be, shall we say, difficult to swallow, stay away. That is, unless you enjoy being insulted by the author for failing “to know better”, as he castigates most theoretical physicists for doing. I will spare your precious time and my thumbs and will not go into the full specifics of what you can expect, but in essence, after spending the first chapter going into great length to explain why instrumentalism and reductionism are poor approaches (which is a fair conclusion), David sadly then launches into a thought experiment whereby he (seriously) claims that the details of laser penumbras and multiple-slit experiments necessarily (yes, really) imply there are at least trillions of parallel universes all around us, apparently branching constantly from every possible particle into completely unexplained spaces, by unexplained means via completely unspecified power schemes, and if you doubt this, you are clearly a reductionist and he is disappointed in you. For extra credit, he actually implies that any other explanation of reality doesn’t actually explain anything at all. Only this one does.
Yes, he really does that. And the book only goes further down this path from there.
If this sounds like an enjoyable way to spend several dozen hours of your life, by all means, spend your credits and purchase this title. If, in the other hand, you prefer to hear actual proper valid arguments made, and if you expect grandiose statements to be supported by equally grand proof, look elsewhere. Here you will find little more than belittlement as basis, and an apparent inability to accept that we simply do not yet have a good explanation for QM just yet. Which makes David’s attempts to paint the MW interpretation as the brave truth all the more ironic.
Which, sadly, to me summarizes my view of this entire work. That, and the word “bitter”... though unfortunately in this case, it isn’t followed by the word “truth”. But that’s me; perhaps you’ll see it very differently. If you intend to purchase this, I sincerely hope so for your blood pressure’s sake.
PS - to be fair, it is narrated well.
61 people found this helpful
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- Brian W. Veit
- 2019-03-23
One of the best books I’ve ever read but one of the worst readers
David Deutsch is a certified genius and this book is required reading for all of humanity. I didn’t realize until I read this book:
1) I was a “reductionist” for thinking of us as a Tegmark “atom heap” (Deutsch argues matter creates mind AND mind creates matter);
2) it’s explanatory not predictive power that makes theory valuable;
3) “many worlds” is the best explanation for quantum theory measurements;
4) when considered together, his “four strands” of Popperian Epistemology, Darwin/Dawkins evolution, Turing/quantum computation, and quantum theory all have more to say about each other than they do about reality alone;
5) there is no “foundation” and it’s fallibility all the way down;
6) the meat computers in our head are already “AI”;
And much more.
HOWEVER it would be hard to conceive a WORSE reader for this book. The “performance” was utterly robotic and fake sounding. The reader seemed to be able to mouth vocalizations that are understandable as “English language sounds” while simultaneously avoiding any kind of meta data (pauses in the correct spaces, emphasis, inflection, etc) that would convey MEANING and UNDERSTANDING of English as a language, much less this book. I seriously thought the joke at the end was going to be that it turned out to have been read by a computer. A bad computer...
David Deutsch has such a wonderful voice and sense of humor — I would so love it if he were to read this book himself. The other sad coda here — this SAME terrible reader reads David Deutch’s other book the “beginning of infinity.” Bummer.
10 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 2019-01-28
Deutsch is ambitious
it was a great listen. it gave me amazing ideas about Evolution, Computation, Quantum Mechanics, Time travel, virtual reality and science broadly. A lot to digest from this rather short work, but well paced and entertaining enough that it cant be put down. It covers new ground for even well-learned students of any of the main disciplines he discusses. Truly novel and interesting work. Narration is well above average.
3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 2020-02-15
Good, but not so great as I thought it would be
That David Deutsch is an extraordinary thinker I already knew, and that book do provide a lot of insights in the ways in wich our knowledge is interrelated, however I certainly didn't expect to see basically every philosophical and scientific position that disagrees with him being so misrepresented. Specially through the end of the book he seems to argues for the many-worlds interpretation as a solution to the free will problem, I fail to see how it could be, if anything a multitude of universes in wich every choice is already taken makes even less of free will that the other possibilities, our choices don't affect anything and seems to be pretty futile, since we can only at max choose what universe would we inhabit (though he don't state how), this is a collapse in morality since you can't have any significant impact on the overall well-being of the whole reality or even a local part of it, you just choose the outcome that will be better for you but objectively they all come true anyway. if that's how reality is like I'm ok with it, I wouldn't argue on moral grounds, I think we must accept the truth whatever it takes us, but he's pulling the moral argument and putting in a multiverse interpretation that I don't see fit. The Omega point discution is more optimist thought, I do believe that we are simulating/computation machines and will evolve to even greater levels eventually simulating whole new worlds and constious beings in it, in fact some would argue it had already happen and we're in it, but there's no way to know, anyway, I think that are some ways in wich a sufficient inteligent computer in the far end of the universe could simulate or even recreate other universes and that might be a strange way in wich universes reproduce, we can even think of a natural selection of universes (Type I universes I mean) in wich the ones that develop such advanced civilizations have greater chance of being reproduced.
2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 2019-09-12
Profound and eye opening
The author breaks down the current state of scientific theory about our universe so that anyone can understand it. I learned a lot, and particularly lived his argument against solipsism, which prior to reading this I would have taken far more seriously. His explanation of how it mirrored the views of the Spanish Inquisition by taking our best explanation and adding extra complexity was very convincing. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what our current best explanations are for the world around us.
2 people found this helpful
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- James Sommer
- 2019-09-04
The foremost genius of our time.
Don't listen to the bad reviews, it just went over their heads. It's worth it.
2 people found this helpful
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- Daniel G
- 2019-04-10
Extremely speculative
My biggest issue with this book is that, even when the author presents an extremely speculative premise, he presents it in a way implying that it is hard, proven fact, even redefining known physical terms in the sense of his ideas.
Summary of the book: "I am right regardless of the lack of any evidence. if you don't accept that, you are an inductivist, and you should be ashamed of yourself"
I genuinely felt insulted by this book intellectually and personally. could not listen to it all.
5 people found this helpful
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- RB
- 2020-12-11
Dump four fashionable topics in a bowl and stir.
Someday a good book will be written about the multiverse and quantum computing, but this is not it. Nuggets of good ideas lie deep under this slog of verbose, dopey writing. Wait for someone to do a better job explaining these interesting topics and read that book instead.
1 person found this helpful
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- Humble
- 2019-11-30
Too complex for audio version
The book is about very complex subjects and the figures (pictures) in the book are supposed to help understand the complex ideas of Quantum Mechanics. But since the figures cannot be seen in an audio version then why was the audio version made for such a complex subject matter? There was no warning or alert informing the buyer of the audio version that the book has illustrations. It is a loss of productivity and wealth when one invests in creating formats that have low impact. Oh well, I lost money for the audio version but the subject is fascinating and worth reading about so I will now buy the print version.
1 person found this helpful
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- Kahlo
- 2018-12-27
MUST FOR SERIOUS STUDENT OF DEUTSCH POPPER DAWKINS
Doesn't matter if you read Fabric of Reality first or afterwards. Both books are understably already historically important. Bonus: great narration!
5 people found this helpful