A beautiful question : finding nature's deep design / Frank Wilczek
By: Wilczek, Frank [author].
Publisher: New York, New York : Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016Description: 430 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm.Content type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9780143109365.Other title: Finding nature's deep design.Subject(s): Physics -- Philosophy | Science -- Aesthetics | Harmony of the spheresGenre/Form: Print books.| Current location | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| On Shelf | QC6 .W55 2016 (Browse shelf) | Available | AU0000000009396 |
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| QC1 .I65 2011 Frontiers of fundamental physics and physics education research / | QC6 .M315 2011 Basic structures of reality : essays in meta-physics / | QC6 .P367 2016 Fashion, faith and fantasy in the new physics of the universe / | QC6 .W55 2016 A beautiful question : finding nature's deep design / | QC6.4.R42 K73 2017 The greatest story ever told--so far : why are we here? / | QC16.E5 E25 2014 Einstein relatively simple : our universe revealed in everyday language / | QC16.E5 G53 2015 Einstein : his space and times / |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 397-405) and index
User's manual -- The question -- Pythagoras I: thought and object -- Pythagoras II: number and harmony -- Plato I: structure from symmetry: Platonic solids -- Plato II: escaping the cave -- Newton I: method and madness -- Newton II: color -- Newton III: dynamic beauty -- Maxwell I: God's esthetics -- Maxwell II: the doors of perception -- Prelude to symmetry -- Quantum beauty I: music of the spheres -- Symmetry I: Einstein's two-step -- Quantum beauty II: exuberance -- Symmetry II: local color -- Quantum beauty III: beauty at the core of nature -- Symmetry III: Emmy Noether. Time, energy, and sanity -- Quantum beauty IV: in beauty we trust -- A beautiful answer? -- Acknowledgements -- Timelines -- Terms of art -- Notes -- Recommended reading -- Illustration credits -- Index
Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this "beautiful question." With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek's groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. In fact, every major advance in his career came from this intuition: to assume that the universe embodies beautiful forms, forms whose hallmarks are symmetry--harmony, balance, proportion--and economy. There are other meanings of "beauty," but this is the deep logic of the universe--and it is no accident that it is also at the heart of what we find aesthetically pleasing and inspiring. As he reveals here, this has been the heart of scientific pursuit from Pythagoras, the ancient Greek who was the first to argue that "all things are number," to Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and into the deep waters of twentieth-century physics. Gorgeously illustrated, A Beautiful Question is a mind-shifting book that braids the age-old quest for beauty and the age-old quest for truth into a thrilling synthesis. Yes: the world is a work of art, and its deepest truths are ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls. --Publisher's description