The dream universe : how fundamental physics lost its way / David Lindley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lindley, David, 1956- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physics--History.

Physics.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 224 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Doubleday, [2020]

Summary:

In the early seventeenth century Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed--from Kepler to Newton to Einstein. But in the early twentieth century when quantum physics, with its deeply complex mathematics, entered into the picture, something began to change. Many physicists began looking to the equations first and physical reality second. As we investigate realms further and further from what we can see and what we can test, we must look to elegant, aesthetically pleasing equations to develop our conception of what reality is. As a result, much of theoretical physics today is something more akin to the philosophy of Plato than the science to which the physicists are heirs. In The Dream Universe, Lindley asks what is science when it becomes completely untethered from measurable phenomena?

Contents:

Part I How Science Began p. 1

1 Galileo Invents Science p. 3

2 Copernicus Doesn't Quite Invent Astronomy p. 13

3 That Old-Time Philosophy p. 25

4 The Holy Roman Empire Strikes Back p. 34

5 How Science Uses Mathematics p. 49

Part II Classical Science Reigns Supreme p. 57

6 Mastery of Motion p. 59

7 The Language of Mathematics p. 71

8 The Limits of Pragmatism p. 82

Part III Fundamental Physics Charts Its Own Course

9 Dirac Invents Antimatter p. 101

10 Wigner's Enigmatic Question p. 110

11 All This Useless Beauty p. 122

12 Science and Engineering p. 134

Part IV Science or Philosophy? p. 145

13 The Last Problems p. 147

14 The Byte-Sized Universe p. 162

15 Is Math All There Is? p. 172

16 The Dream Universe p. 182.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical resources (pages [205]-212) and index.

ISBN:

0385543859

9780385543859

OCLC:

1105937969

Publisher Number:

99984328083