I’m going to be open-minded here. I will be. First, I will address the book on its style, its writing, and the information presented. Then, there will be a rant and I do not apologize for that.

Steven E. Landsburg’s The Big Questions is an intriguing foray into the use of non-typical sciences to look at macroscopic philosophical questions. The questions in questions range from why is there something rather than nothing, is there a God, is logical disagreement a sign of inherent meaninglessness, can we really know everything, and so on. These are indeed interesting and challenging questions. Looking into philosophy using physics and economics is kind of fun and gets one thinking laterally and not directly, which on the whole is a good skill to have.

Landsburg’s tackling of these questions is in many ways logical and rich. There are indeed mathematical bases for following both morality and human perception of color (as well as other things in the universe). His main premise is that once you have math, everything else follows. One of the very mind-boggling assertions me makes is that almost no one is deeply religious because crimes are committed on a fairly regular basis and acts of martyrdom are not. That part makes for fun reading. And for the most part, Landsburg’s theories are engaging, flow well, and get you to think a little more critically about the larger picture.

Now for the rant: The whammy comes near the end of the book. Landsburg unequivocally advocates for the near dismissal of English departments in education. He starts with the basis that reading is a leisure activity and is not a serious use of educational time. He argues that one could get just about as much educational content from a night spent watching The Simpsons. To completely dismiss an entire branch of study as useless when you just spent an entire book using disparate fields to look at philosophical questions seems to me both self-defeating and insulting. You never know where the next great piece of information or idea will come from, but apparently according to Dr. Landsburg, literature will never contain it. Boo, Mr. Landsburg, boo to you, sir. ( )

I found the title of this book to be a little misleading. This is more of a libertarian rant by economist Landsburg -- complete with the moral reasoning why restaurants should not be forced by the government to serve all clientele regardless of race -- than it is a philosophy book. I guess it could be considered to be Landsburg's personal philosophy. By the end of his polemic, Landsburg is even disdaining the reading of books, calling it a hobby like tennis. I guess the next time I choose to read a book by an economist I'll pull a book off the shelf by Paul Krugman. ( )

Well written. Addresses old questions in a fresh manner. Loved his approach to how we make decisions and that we tend to be dishonest in our opinions. ( )

Totally useless book. I don't mind not understanding complex math, but Landsburg does not even try to educate the reader on how he comes up with his solutions. The chapter with Hercules and the Hydra was the last straw for me. He does a good job explaining Hercules' problem with cutting off the multiplying heads of the Hydra. He tells the reader that there are two methods that Hercules can prevail. Then he states that the solution involves a number so huge that it is 144 times times the odds of a mouse surviving on the surface of the sun for a week (which happens to be 1 in 10 to the 137th power, but don't hold your breath waiting to find out how that number is determined). After all that he moves on to the next chapter without bothering to give the reader the benefit of an answer. ( )

A pop philosophy book with dollops of math and physics and other subjects, by an economics professor. Just some snippets from the table of contents hint at what a GREAT READ it is: "Mathematics exists because it must and everything else exists because it is made of mathematics"; "Most beliefs are ill-considered because most false beliefs are costless to hold"; "[A]lmost nobody is deeply religious"; "Gôdel's incompleteness theorem, and what it doesn't say about the limits of human knowledge"; "What physics does and doesn't tell us about what we can and cannot know."; "Advice to college students: Stay away from the English department and approach the philosophy department with caution". Not that I agree with all his stances. www.the-big-questions.com.