The Encyclopedia of Ignorance

The front cover says "Everything you ever wanted to know about the unknown" They were not kidding. This is a series of short essays packed with profound questions and a powerful amount of knowledge to back the questions up. If you are a Gary Zukav fan then this will defiantly be to complex for you. The contributors are too numerous to mention; however they include information from Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Just as you think this is a past cutting edge physics book, it switches to "What is consciousness and do we really need it?" You will find augments for and against your favorite theories. Some of the Contents are Why O. R. Frich The Lure of Completeness Sir Hermann Bondi Nature of Knowledge R. A. Lyttlen Is Physics Legislated by Cosmogony? J. A. Wheeler and C. M. Patton Is Space Curved? I.W. Roxburgh Relativity and Time T. Gold Mathematics in Social Science C. W. Kilmister Learning and Memory and the Nervous System H.A. Buchtel and G. Berlucchi Sleep W.B. Webb The Veils of Gaia P. Cloud The Design of Novel Replicating Polymers A.G. Cairns-Smith and C.J. Davis

This book had a great influence on me when I was growing up. The copyright is 1979, and many of the scientific details are now outdated. The book is a collection of technical/scientific papers on what is UNKNOWN. The papers were written by prominent researchers in the physical and life sciences. Some of the problems are so difficult, however, that not that much progress has been made in 20 plus years. What would be really nice would be to see this kind of book redone today.The first chapters are more philosophical, then are followed by mind-bending papers, in clear English but with challenging concepts and some math, by P.C.W. Davies, Roger Penrose, et al. This was where I first learned that no theory of quantum gravity has been developed, where I was introduced to Mach's principle, the "coincidental large numbers" linking cosmology to particle physics, etc.