Origins

By: Jim Baggott

Narrated by: Neil Scott-Barbour

Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's Summary

What is the nature of the material world? How does it work? What is the universe and how was it formed? What is life? Where do we come from and how did we evolve? How and why do we think? What does it mean to be human? How do we know? There are many different versions of our creation story. This book tells the version according to modern science. It is a unique account, starting at the Big Bang and travelling right up to the emergence of humans as conscious intelligent beings, 13.8 billion years later. Chapter by chapter, it sets out the current state of scientific knowledge: the origins of space and time; energy, mass, and light; galaxies, stars, and our sun; the habitable earth, and complex life itself. Drawing together the physical and biological sciences, Baggott recounts what we currently know of our history, highlighting the questions science has yet to answer.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2015 Jim Baggott (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

My brain is going to explode...

What an outstanding book. Its not complicated but you best have a general understanding of particle physics and cosmology. It does dive deep but he stops before you can't follow along, and he does a perfect job of it. I just can't get passed chapter 5 without my brain exploding. But I have listened to the first 5 chapters 25 times. It's that good.

2 people found this helpful

Interesting book, but WOW, the narrator ...

What was one of the most memorable moments of Origins?

Unfortunately, the most memorable aspect of this audiobook is how the narrator mispronounces almost every scientific term used in this audiobook. This includes the names of many important scientists that have shaped this field. This is extremely distracting for anyone with just a little bit of scientific knowledge and background. All others will learn incorrect pronunciation of the names of scientists and the names of basic scientific and biological terms. Pheny-lala-nine ....

4 people found this helpful

The book and content was awesome

I really enjoyed hearing about the origins on a purely scientific view. The only thing Thursday was a negative was that the narrator did not seem to know the material well and was just reading to us. It was noticeable by his mispronounciation of words and struggle with some all together.

Poor narration made it a hard book to follow

Overall the content of the book was decent. I found there were a few points at the end of the book regarding the continuation of Human evolution I didn't fully agree with, in that in the last 10k years, my views are more along the lines of mutation and some artificial selection, in that there is a decreasing degree of natural selection pressure.

Beyond that I found the book in audiobook format really hard to stick with because of the poor quality of the narrator. With long poorly placed pauses, strange and maybe incorrectly pronounced words, and even points where the wrong inflection was used, making it harder to get the author's point. There were even a small number of attempts at humor being wasted with poor narration.

In closing I would say the book is a good read in text format for those very interested in the biology of life, other the level of detail being 1 maybe 2 steps past an 101 introduction level. Some of the details on chemistry, reactions and molecules also being easier to understand and track in text over audio form.

1 person found this helpful