Milton K. Munitz – författare

The theoretical physicist shares his latest thoughts on the nature of space and time in this anthology of selections from Princeton University Press. Along with eminent colleagues, Hawking extends theoretical frontiers by speculating on the big questions of modern cosmology.

The description for this book, Cosmic Understanding: Philosophy and Science of the Universe, will be forthcoming.

When we read that scientists have come close to pinpointing the "origin of the universe" by means of a Big Bang cosmology, or are engaged in formulating a "theory of everything," as in current ten-dimensional superstring theories of particle physics, can we doubt that such inquiries or their results inevitably raise important philosophical questions? In the present book, as well as in his previous work Cosmic Understanding, the renowned philosopher Milton Munitz attempts to answer some of these questions by examining recent scientific theories of cosmology in a philosophical context.

Hailed by philosopher Sidney Hook as "a landmark in the history of American philosophy," the International Philosophy Year in 1967-68 brought seventy of the Western world's most distinguished philosophers to the State University College at Brockport for a series of fourteen conferences devoted to different areas of philosophic inquiry.Contemporary Philosophic Thought, which records the original papers of these conferences in four volumes, stands not only as a major contribution to philosophy, but also as a wide survey of the range of conceptual problems that philosophers are working to solve. Vol. 1, Language, Belief, and Metaphysics, is addressed to problems of logic and language. Contributors discuss the nature of belief and present theories on the concept of the world and on identity through time.Vol. 2, Mind, Science, and History, focuses on the mind and related issues. Scientists and historians join philosophers in considering problems that bear upon their disciplines.Vol. 3, Perspectives in Education, Religion, and the Arts, discusses philosophy as related to cultural change, the changing aims of education, and religion. The philosophy of art is explored from varying viewpoints of genre, style, poetics, aesthetics, rhetoric, and communication.Vol. 4, Ethics and Social Justice, takes up moral and legal issues with essays on human rights and on philosophy as applied to practice.

'The meaning of life' ...we question it, ponder it, dispute and fret about it, but at some point each of us finds the need to address this fundamental issue of human existence. Some believe that there is a purpose inherent in our nature as human beings and in the vast universe of which we are but a small part. Others hold that the values we strive for and the virtues we seek are revealed to us by a divine creator of the cosmos in whose plan we figure as integral components. Still others say that our lives have no intrinsic meaning beyond that which we give them. With such competing views, how are we to sort out for ourselves this special human concern? In this book, well-known philosopher and scholar Milton K Munitz suggests that we must first set aside our comfortable assumptions and try to gain an accurate understanding of this powerful concept known as 'the meaning of life'. Capturing its influence on our lives requires that we first consider the basic character of the world around us. We can approach this intellectual and spiritual need by trying to map out the major dimensions of existence in the hope of sorting out what constitutes the content of our world.Equipped with such an overview, we should be in a better position to consider the locus, opportunities, and limits for finding various types and sources of meaning in our individual lives. In pursuit of this goal, Munitz contends that we must recognise a basic distinction between two important dimensions of Reality: the Observable Universe - the domain of interactive existence (including human existents) open to increasingly refined identification of its varied contents, their intelligibility, and - in very limited cases - to human control, and Boundless Existence, a wholly unintelligible, transcendent aspect of Reality that should not be confused with common theistic conceptions of God. This book will tweak many comfortable beliefs about who we are and what, if anything, life has to offer. It will help remove the intellectual clutter from a topic that has occupied our attention for centuries.