Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 1,217 ratings

Price: 15.75

Last update: 01-09-2025


About this item

A contrarian scientist wrestles with the big questions that modern physics raises, and what physics says about the human condition.

Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation. On the other hand, the idea that the universe itself is conscious is difficult to rule out entirely.

According to Sabine Hossenfelder, it is not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy have become the go-to explanations of alternative healers, or that people believe their deceased grandmother is still alive because of quantum mechanics. Science and religion have the same roots, and they still tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? The area of science that is closest to answering these questions is physics. Over the last century, physicists have learned a lot about which spiritual ideas are still compatible with the laws of nature. Not always, though, have they stayed on the scientific side of the debate.

In this lively, thought-provoking book, Hossenfelder takes on the biggest questions in physics: Does the past still exist? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? She lays out how far physicists are on the way to answering these questions, where the current limits are, and what questions might well remain unanswerable forever. Her book offers a no-nonsense yet entertaining take on some of the toughest riddles in existence, and will give the listener a solid grasp on what we know—and what we don’t know.

* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF with key visual figures included in the book.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Busy Working Mom
    5.0 out of 5 stars Physics is just philosophy in a lab coat!
    Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2024
    Existential Physics unpacks the universe with a wit sharper than a photon beam, proving that physics is just philosophy in a lab coat.

    Hossenfelder’s knack for blending hard science with existential musings makes mind-bending concepts feel like an engaging dinner table debate.

    I love how she fearlessly tackles deep philosophical questions with scientific rigor and a no-nonsense wit that keeps even the heaviest topics surprisingly accessible and entertaining.

    Five Stars.
    Customer image
    Busy Working Mom
    5.0 out of 5 stars Physics is just philosophy in a lab coat!
    Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2024
    Existential Physics unpacks the universe with a wit sharper than a photon beam, proving that physics is just philosophy in a lab coat.

    Hossenfelder’s knack for blending hard science with existential musings makes mind-bending concepts feel like an engaging dinner table debate.

    I love how she fearlessly tackles deep philosophical questions with scientific rigor and a no-nonsense wit that keeps even the heaviest topics surprisingly accessible and entertaining.

    Five Stars.
    Images in this review
    Customer image
  • W. ANDERSON
    4.0 out of 5 stars Sabine’s opinions are her own and at times disagree with the evidence.
    Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2024
    The book is well written and Sabine is intelligent and witty, however she is not always right. For example, “Stephen Hawking, according to whom we live in a multiverse that eliminates the need for a creator.” Pp 152

    Vs.

    “Holographic cosmology excises the multiverse like Ockham’s razor, Stephen concluded. In the last few years of his life, he was adamant that the multiverse frenzy had been an artifact of “classical bottom-up thinking tying itself into knots” pp 246 On the Origin of Time, Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory by Thomas Hertog.

    “In short, as Stephen emphasized in our first conversation, it appears as fi the universe has somehow been designed to make life possible.” pp 8.

    I highly recommend reading Hertog’s book before reading Sabine’s book. Sabine is better at simplifying while Hertog is by far the better cosmologist.

    Sabine’s book is interesting and I agree with many of her insights such as in regard to a ‘soul’ she wrote, “Because the physical part of our brain is demonstrably the thing we use to make decisions, I don’t see what one gains form believing in a non-physical free will,” She is correct of course, but missed the point that the Bible states “thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:4) at death. Her position on the human soul is biblical, but she is unaware of that. Her discussion of the soul is part of her topic on there being no free-will. Here she makes the very common error of believing that free-will doesn’t exist due to how to the universe works, but missing the fact that as she pointed out, the human consciousness is a purely physical phenomena, that of course has physical effects. As you can imagine, this part of the book gets a bit convoluted because Sabine misses that point. I know another reader of the book got hung up at this point on page 138 and returned the book for a refund. How I know this is because they left a receipt from the Juno Beach Café for their ice tea and turkey sausage omelet breakfast. However, since my hardcover copy was new, this is clearly a case of quantum fluctuations on a macroscale where physical things can random appear in places they can’t possibly be. For reference see “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”

    Sabine goes downhill from there in the end of book disproving some ridiculous topics like “Does the universe think?” which is like disproving the Flat Earth theory. She mentions the fact that the web of galaxies across the universe, resembles the pattern of connections in our brains. “the distribution of matter in the universe looks a little like the connectome, the network of nerve connections in the human brain.” pp 170, and on pp 172 explains how for the universe, this pattern of distribution is the result of the expansion of space. She then states “Brains in contrast, don’t normally expand,” missing the fact that the connections in the brain begin to form well before birth and as the baby grows, the brain does indeed expand. Which means the similarity seen in the universe and our brains are both due to expansion.

    I do recommend Sabine’s book; it starts well and only falters toward the end due to covering some minor topic that are less interesting. But keep in mind, Sabine’s opinions are her own and at times disagree with the evidence.
  • Andy G.
    5.0 out of 5 stars More to this book than existential physics
    Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2022
    I would have given this book a 4.5, but only integer numbers of stars are available. I am a fan of Sabine's YouTube channel "Science without the gobbledygook", and this book reads like a detailed presentation on topics she might cover there, with easy-to-understand explanations, humor, background, and nice summaries. Sabine covers a lot of topics and pretty much all of them are interesting: does the universe think? Will we ever know it all? Was the universe made for us? Can a computer be conscious? What about artificial general intelligence?

    What I like about Sabine's approach is equal time on multiple views of a topic, the science, and her view. She does this while still giving air time and showing respect for opinions she clearly doesn't agree with. I am an engineer and scientist and learned a lot from this book.

    Here's the extra credit that's sprinkled through the entire book: a *very* crisp distinction between what is science and what is not science. When something isn't scientific, which Sabine calls ascientific, it doesn't mean it's wrong. It might be wrong. It might be true. It simply means it's neither provable nor falsifiable, nor does it make testable predictions. Religion isn't the only thing that is ascientific (again, doesn't mean it's wrong...just means it isn't science): theories of the origin of the big bang, the existence of multiple universes, etc. These may be proposed by scientists, but that doesn't make them science. This distinction is not a judgement or criticism. But it is an important distinction.

    I won't spoil the epilog, but I found a few gems to think about there.

    This is an easy book to pick up and read several pages, then come back to it. I purchased the combined Kindle and audio version so I could go back and forth during a trip. The woman who reads the audio book reader is good, but I would have paid $20 extra to hear Sabine read the book. I can hear her voice in my mind from her YouTube channel when reading the book in text form.

    OK, so why not 5 stars? There's names of scientists and concepts (like the NavierStokes equations) that could have had more explanation for non-scientific readers. As an engineer/scientist, I knew what all these were, but the book is otherwise so well written for a general audience that I felt like she should have spent a little more time with some history and explanation of scientists and concepts.

    Conclusion: recommended for all audiences, scientific and not. A pretty good book. Gets better as you go. Easy to pick up and put down. You could just read the chapters you are interested in, but I predict you'll want to read all of them. Fun.
  • Jon G. Allen
    5.0 out of 5 stars Uncommon Wit: Intelligence and Humor
    Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2023
    This book is a great read. I'm not a physicist and a fair amount was over my head. But the writing is as clear as can be and I learned all I could. Most important: I learned a new word: ascientific; it's clearer that "unscientific" or "nonscientific." Ascientific means that the topic under consideration is neither contradicted or supported by science. I greatly appreciate Hossenfelder's clarity about the limits of science and her openness to ascientific thinking. She takes science (physics) as far as it can go and no farther with regard to questions about human life. For example: God? Science: "No Comment." This position does not leave us with a free-for-all when it comes to what to believe, just that ascientifc beliefs must draw on other sources of justification. I think her position is compatible with William James's Will to Believe. He was an extremely disciplined thinker, and he developed the comprehensive science of psychology, but he was unconstrained by science when it didn't apply--thankfully.
  • A M
    5.0 out of 5 stars A self-confident author writes about Physics and Philosophy
    Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2024
    A self-confident author writes about the great questions in Physics and Philosophy. Although many of her ideas, mainly in philosophy, are under dispute, the book is exciting and thought-provoking.

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