Waves and Stones

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A new exploration of our conception of reality, by one of the world’s most influential philosophers

How do we understand the world and our place in it? Do our lives consist of a small number of dramatic turning points, or is there nothing but a series of gradual changes from infancy to old age? Are there two fully discrete genders existing by nature, or numerous gradations between the male and female poles? And in physics, how can the continuities of general relativity coexist with the discontinuities of quantum theory?

In Waves and Stones, Graham Harman shows that the paradoxical interaction between the continuous and the discrete, the question of whether reality is made up of sudden jumps or is laid out along a gentle gradient with no clear divisions between the various things in the world, permeates every area of human life. What’s more, this paradox is as old as human thought itself. In exploring how the continuous and discrete relate to each other, he takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey from the philosophers of ancient Greece, through the writings of the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, through architectural and evolutionary theory, the compatibility of religion with science, and the wave-particle duality of matter.

To explore the relationship between the continuous and the discrete, Harman shows, is to explore the very fabric of reality. With this dazzling new book, he proposes a new way of thinking about this ancient problem, with profound implications for our understanding of ourselves and the bewilderingly complex world in which we live.