The dream universe how fundamental physics lost its way / David Lindley.
| Author/creator | Lindley, David, 1956- |
| Format | Electronic |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication Info | New York : Doubleday, [2020] |
| Description | xiv, 224 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm |
| Supplemental Content | Full text available from eBooks on EBSCOhost |
| Subjects |
| Contents | How science began : Galileo invents science ; Copernicus doesn't quite invent astronomy ; That old-time philosophy ; The Holy Roman Empire strikes back ; How science uses mathematics -- Classical science reigns supreme : Mastery of motion ; The language of mathematics ; The limits of pragmatism -- Fundamental physics charts its own course : Dirac invents antimatter ; Wigner's enigmatic question ; All this useless beauty ; Science and engineering -- Science or philosophy? : The last problems ; The byte-sized universe ; Is math all there is? ; The dream universe. |
| Abstract | 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? |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-212) and index. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| LCCN | 2019919588 |
| ISBN | 9780385543859 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0385543859 (hardcover) |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Resources | Access Content Online | ✔ Available |