(2009) The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics. By Steven E Landsburg. (ISBN: 9781439148211)

Book Description: Free Press / Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, NY, U.S.A., 2009. Stated First Free Press Hardcover Edition 2009, number line on copyright page reads (10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1). Cyan Hardcover Boards, Black Cloth Spine With Silver Text. This is a First Edition remainder book which is new and never used, and has a black felt pen mark on the bottom edge of the pages. 267 pages and About The Author Page, 5.75" x 8.625" tall, .1" thick. New copy. Never read. Not price clipped. Beautiful copy of book and dust jacket. COLLECTOR'S COPY.

Book Condition: Brand New.

Dust Jacket Condition: Brand New. NON price-clipped DJ [$26.00 US].

About This Book: Brand New Book. In the wake of his enormously popular books The Armchair Economist and More Sex Is Safer Sex, Slate columnist and Economics professor Steven Landsburg uses concepts from mathematics, economics, and physics to address the big questions in philosophy: What is real? What can we know? What is the difference between right and wrong? And how should we live? Landsburg begins with the broadest possible categories from a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God; to the real meaning of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Godel Incompleteness Theorem; to the moral choices we face in the marketplace and the voting booth. Stimulating, illuminating, and always surprising, The Bid Questions challenges readers to re-evaluate their most fundamental beliefs and reveals the relationship between the loftiest philosophical quests and our everyday lives.

Synopsis: Steven Landsburg uses concepts from mathematics, economics, and physics to address the big questions in philosophy: What is real? What can we know? What is the difference between right and wrong? And how should we live?

Widely renowned for his lively explorations of economics, in his fourth book Landsburg branches out into mathematics and physics as well—disciplines that, like economics, the author loves for their beauty, their logical clarity, and their profound and indisputable truth—to take us on a provocative and utterly entertaining journey through the questions that have preoccupied philosophers through the ages. The author begins with the broadest possible categories—Reality and Unreality; Knowledge and Belief; Right and Wrong—and then focuses his exploration on specific concerns: from a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God; to the real meaning of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Godel Incompleteness Theorem; to the moral choices we face in the marketplace and the voting booth. 

Stimulating, illuminating, and always surprising, The Big Questions challenges readers to re-evaluate their most fundamental beliefs and reveals the relationship between the loftiest philosophical quests and our everyday lives.

About The Author: Steven E. Landsburg (born 1954) is an American professor of economics at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. From 1989 to 1995, he taught at Colorado State University.

Education: Professor Landsburg was an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, but never completed his undergraduate requirements due to his failure to take a physical education course. He was awarded a Masters degree after he enrolled in his own course when he became a professor at the school. Landsburg received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1979.

He also spent time at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Popular writings: Landsburg currently writes a column on "everyday economics" for Slate magazine. The subjects of the columns are diverse and often draw on current affairs. Landsburg has discussed the national debt, the obesity crisis, payments to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in New Orleans and salary caps in the NFL. Alternatively, Landsburg discusses recent research in micro-economics and its implications. In this vein, he has discussed the value of mobile phones and driving, the (career) cost of motherhood, and whether or not daughters (as opposed to sons) cause divorce.

Landsburg has even addressed legal issues: in a Slate column from 2003, he proposed punishing jurors when a jury's decision is later "proven" to be wrong, such as when an acquitted defendant later admits to committing the crime. If a jury's judgement is later "proven" to be right, Landsburg suggested the jurors should be financially rewarded.

Landsburg has been particularly critical of mainstream environmentalism having devoted both Slate columns and book chapters (in The Armchair Economist) to attack environmentalist principles. As a self-described "hardcore libertarian", Landsburg emphasizes the importance of individual choice. This position extends to health care, and his view that those who choose no insurance should not receive (potentially life saving) treatment. This position was asserted partly as a response to an article published by Daily Kos .

Landsburg supports free trade and opposes protectionism, and his writings in the topic have appeared in various newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. Landsburg's comparison of protectionism to racism in Forbes magazine prompted a response from Pat Buchanan.^[8] On April 8, 2005, Landsburg debated protectionism and free trade with John Gibson on the Fox News Channel's The Big Story. Before the 2004 presidential election Landsburg stated that he planned to vote against John Kerry because of his belief that John Edwards, Kerry's running mate, was a "xenophobe" due to his opposition to free trade. He compared Edwards' views to David Duke's racism.

He has also reviewed popular economics books Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist for the Wall Street Journal.

Academic writings: Landsburg's articles in academic journals have dealt with many fields, including algebraic K-theory, module patching, quantum game theory, philosophy of science and moral philosophy.

Selected publications follow.

Mathematics:

• K-theory and patching for categories of complexes, Duke Mathematics Journal, Vol. 62, No. 2, March 1991, pp. 359–384.
• Relative Cycles and Algebraic K-Theory, American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 111, No. 4, August 1989, pp. 599–632.

Teaching: Professor Landsburg teaches intermediate and advanced microeconomics at the University of Rochester. He was promoted from adjunct associate professor to professor during the 2005-2006 academic year and in 2007 he received the University's Professor of the Year in Social Sciences award.

Personal: For several years, Landsburg served on the board of directors of Hutchinson Technology, a manufacturer of suspension assemblies for disk drives.

Landsburg lives in Rochester, NY. In his spare time he reads poetry and enjoys crossword puzzles. He has one daughter, named Cayley, who was featured in his book Fair Play.

He has eastern European Jewish heritage.

Books:

• Price Theory and Applications (1989)
• The Armchair Economist (1993)
• Macroeconomics (1996)
• Fair Play (1997)
• More Sex is Safer Sex, The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics (2007)
• The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics (2009)
• A Mathematical Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology (unreleased)