The Beginning and the End

Dr. Clément Vidal is a philosopher with a background in logic and cognitive sciences. He is co-director of the 'Evo Devo Universe' community and founder of the 'High Energy Astrobiology' prize. To satisfy his intellectual curiosity when facing the big questions, he brings together many areas of knowledge such as cosmology, physics, astrobiology, complexity science, evolutionary theory and philosophy of science.

Part I Overview of Worldviews.- The Six Dimensions of Philosophy.- Criteria for Worldview Comparison.- Religious, Scientific and Philosophical Worldviews.- Part II The Beginning of the Universe.- Origins of the Origin.- Capturing Free Parameters.- The Fine-Tuning Conjecture.- Part III Our Future in the Universe.- The Future of Scientific Simulations.- Cosmological Selections.- High Energy Astrobiology.- Cosmological Ethics and Immortality.- Appendix I: A Cosmic Evolutionary Worldview.- Appendix II: Argumentative Maps.

From the book reviews:

"Vidal (Free Univ. of Brussels) offers a large-scale interdisciplinary work packed with interesting and challenging ideas. ... Vidal's book is an impressive work of up-to-date, scientifically informed philosophy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." (L. B. McHenry, Choice, Vol. 52 (6), February, 2015)

"In a very beautiful book, The Beginning and the End, published by Springer, Clément Vidal, a young French philosopher, succeeds in synthesizing what is at stake in the programmed disappearance. ... What is the ultimate goal of humanity, of science? For Clément Vidal, the answer to this latter question is clear: the ultimate goal of science is to fight the death of the universe, with the artificial creation of new universes." (quote translated into English, original book review in French language: Laurent Alexandre, Le monde, June 28, 2014)