Book Description
In this groundbreaking book, the renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that physics—the basis for all other science—has lost its way. The problem is string theory, an ambitious attempt to formulate "a theory of everything" that explains all the forces and particles of nature and how the universe came to be. With its exotic new particles and parallel universes, string theory has captured the public"s imagination and seduced many physicists. But as Smolin reveals, there"s a deep flaw in the theory: no part of it has been proven, and no one knows how to prove it. As a scientific theory, it has been a colossal failure. And because it has soaked up the lion's share of funding, attracted some of the best minds, and penalized young physicists for pursuing other avenues, it is dragging the rest of physics down with it. With clarity, passion, and authority, Smolin charts the rise and fall of string theory and takes a fascinating look at what will replace it. A group of young theorists has begun to develop exciting new ideas that are, unlike string theory, testable. Smolin tells us who and what to watch for in the coming years and how we can find the next Einstein. This is a wake-up call, and Lee Smolin—a former string theorist himself— is the perfect person to deliver it.
Customer Reviews:
Scientific progress is never cut and dried.......2007-10-08
Lee Smolin presents a harsh critique of the last 30 years in theoretical physics, written by one of its practitioners. He makes the excellent point that science is a human activity like anything else. Progress is always hard to predict; scientists can and do get caught up in dead ends. Smolin thinks string theory is one such dead end, and makes a good case for it.
I think that, if anything, Smolin is a little too gentle on the field. The development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs left a tremendous impression that big money put into physics would bring big results. In recent years that hasn't happened. There are so many unanswered questions out there in science, so many important fields where solutions are desperately needed. When I consider the construction and operation of particle accelerators and other high-tech equipment, I can't help but think of the huge cost. The same amount of cash invested elsewhere might have brought much more in the way of useful results.
I am the mother of a 10-year-old boy attending public school. His instruction sometimes seems to me like a mishmash of well-meaning educational reforms that have been implemented with little or no testing to see if they worked or not. I am frankly disgusted by the quality of most research in the area of education--sample sizes too small, no proper controls, subjects followed for too short a time, etc. The cost of operating a single particle accelerator for six weeks probably exceeds all the funding for educational research around the world for the entire year. Yet which has the most potential for making major progress? Maybe it's time to back off on funding big physics projects for a while.
I would also like to point out that the building and use of instrumentation for high-energy physics is highly dependent on cheap fossil fuels. The future supply of such fuels is by no means guaranteed. The peak oil problem appears to be largely ignored by high-energy physicists today, but has the potential to significantly affect their ability to conduct experiments.
I really enjoyed Smolin's chapters on looking for seers rather than technicians in science. I especially liked his description of how unconventional scientists have built a career without a university job. Smolin points out that a typical professor spends a majority of his week on teaching, grant proposals, administrative tasks, and the like, leaving a surprisingly small amount of time available for actual research. Having a day job outside the field is not as big a hurdle as it might seem.
I tend to agree with Smolin that the big advances of the future are likely to come from completely unexpected directions. I can't wait to see what they are.
physics from many angles.......2007-10-05
This book provided several discussions pf physics and quantum theory. its good because the author speaks of the history the the originators of physics theory and the current champions of thought.
A mixed bag.......2007-10-04
At the moment, string theory appears to have many (possibly an infinite number) of "metastable vacua", each of which would allow for a universe with its own laws of physics. (For a brief, comic, yet essentially correct summary of the history of this idea, see Peter Shor's review here. For those who don't know, Shor is a celebrated quantum-information theorist.) According to the (far from established) inflationary model of cosmology, there is a vast collection of universes (the "multiverse") with diverse laws of physics. Which universe we find ourselves in is a matter of random selection, but of course we must be in a "biofriendly" universe, one whose laws of physics allow for the appearance of intelligent life.
The core argument of this book is presented on page 164-165 (US hardcover edition), where Smolin writes, "when it comes to the biofriendliness of our universe, we have at least three possibilities:
"1. Ours is one of a vast collection of universes with random laws.
"2. There was an intelligent designer.
"3. There is a so-far-unknown mechanism that will both explain the biofriendliness of our universe and make testable predictions by which it can be confirmed or falsified.
"Given that the first two possibilities are untestable in principle, it is most rational to hold out for the third possibility. Indeed, that is the only possibility we should consider as scientists, because accepting either of the first two would mean the end of our field."
I find this to be an astonishing argument. First of all, I don't know what "most rational" is supposed to mean. More importantly, to reject a scientific hypothesis for purely personal reasons (it "would mean the end of our field") is at best novel, and at worst absurd.
Very few string theorists are happy that #1 seems, at this point, to be the most likely outcome of string theory, and many hope that #3 will somehow eventually emerge. But to throw out the whole framework, simply because we don't like the result, cannot be said to be a scientific attitude.
One thing you won't learn in this book (unless you read it very carefully, and between the lines) is that the other approaches to quantum gravity advocated by Smolin have not come any closer to predicting specific experimental results than string theory has. Smolin talks about possible violations of special relativity, but these are not (as he admits on page 237) a definite prediction of loop quantum gravity. He has said (on Peter Woit's blog) that any quantum field theory in any number of dimensions is compatible with loop quantum gravity. If true, this would make loop quantum gravity even less capable than string theory of picking out our particular laws of physics.
Smolin also discusses issues of sociology in physics. On page 335-336, he asserts that the all the truly negative characterizations of job candidates that he has ever heard have had a component of racism and/or sexism. I am on the faculty of the physics department of a research university, and I can only say that my experience has been entirely different. I have simply never heard a racist or sexist denigration of one scientist by another, nor have I ever felt that anyone was being evaluated by criteria other than merit. I think that there are definitely issues of culture and how we can construct scientific communities that have broader appeal, and that there are physicists who are not as sensitive to these issues as they might be, but I cannot accept Smolin's claim that the relatively small percentage of women and blacks in physics is due to "blatant prejudice".
Finally, Smolin discusses the issues of "seers" vs "craftspeople" in science, and argues that we should be supporting more "seers". Among the existing seers, he lists some (such as Roger Penrose and Gerard 't Hooft) who made their reputations primarily as craftspeople ('t Hooft received the Nobel Prize for his work on the renormalization of gauge theories, and Penrose did celebrated work on the singularity theorems of general relativity). Their record as seers has been less successful; none of their recent ideas on modifications of quantum mechanics have panned out as yet. Smolin laments the fact that more attention is not paid to these forays into alternatives to quantum mechanics. But 't Hooft and Penrose do not agree on what modifications are needed. Other seers identified by Smolin propose violations of special relativity, rather than (or in addition to) violations of quantum mechanics. Perhaps this is all deep thought, but there is little to decide, at this point, which if any of these avenues should be pursued. Most physicists have therefore sensibly adopted a "wait and see" attitude.
Even if we accept Smolin's argument that we need new seers, how are we to find them? Smolin writes (page 353) that in order to discover "the visionaries who ignore the mainstream and follow their own ambitious programs", we should "find at least one accomplished person in the candidate's field who is deeply excited about what the candidate is trying to do". So, the candidate's program had better not be *too* far off the mainstream; there has to be at least one "accomplished person" who is "deeply excited" about it. But if one deeply excited professional is good, wouldn't more be better? Wouldn't that up the odds that the program was, indeed, worthwhile? Oh wait, that would be just what we have now ... a system where there is constant debate, emergent consensus on the most promising approaches, and distribution of research funds primarily (but by no means exclusively!) to those approaches that appear, in the consensus view, to be most promising. To paraphrase Winston Churchill on democracy, this system for distributing funds for science may be the worst ever devised, except for all the others.
So, should you buy the book? I feel that it gives a distorted picture, by emphasizing the weak points of string theory while ignoring the (many more, in my view) weak points of the alternatives. It seems to me that the essence of the book's argument against string theory is captured by the excerpts above, and by Shor's review. Then there is a lot of discussion of groupthink in scientific culture. For me, it doesn't add up to an appealing package, but your mileage may vary.
The Endless Quest Continues .......2007-10-04
I like Lee Smolin and this is a good exposition of the current quandary in Physics. When the mathematicians "hijacked" physics in the 1920's, they created ever-so elegant formulas and abstraction upon abstraction upon abstraction. "Just give me a formula!" was their mantra, and what it all really "means" was not their concern. This is the essence of Bohr's position (no pun intended), and Einstein was not able to answer, even though he knew something was missing.
String theory has many intriguing ideas, and it's supporters should not be easily dismissed. Again and again, we come back to the basic question...particle or wave? Wavicle? Partiwave? String?
Outstanding piece of writing, A must-read for any science enthusiast........2007-09-22
I found this book to be superbly written and full of fascinating insights. I really loved reading it. Many of the longer reviews here do a great job of reviewing the content of the book, so I'll stick to offering my opinion.
I will no doubt read this book again in the future as much of the content was way over my head. However, as with any great book on any subject, this did not prevent me from thoroughly enjoying it and learning a lot. What makes it so great is that each time I read it I will learn more.
I want to thank Lee Smolin for putting the current state of his field in some perspective. I highly, highly recommend this book!
Book Description
In The Wonder of the World, "Guru" (Madhva Mitra) and "Geek" (Joe Levin) debate the fundamental questions of existence. These are the starting points of their inquiry:
- What happened before the Big Bang?
- Does the universe have an IQ?
- How do electrons and photons, cells and proteins, "know" what to do and what keeps them ticking?
- How do thoughts "cause" brain events?
- Is there a supra-scientific Theory of Everything?
- What did the pioneers and prophets of science think of God?
Guru is an exponent of the God-equation that underlies science and reason and Geek is an atheist scientist who holds that science leaves no room for religion. Guru seeks to show that we can "see" God here and now. Geek says, "show me." Guru offers to lead a pilgrimage from the invention of Nature to the Mind of God. Join them now as they journey through the Wonder of the World: space, time and motion; the quantum microverse; Big Bang and other cosmologies; the saga of life on planet Earth and the appearance of rational self-consciousness.
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing.......2007-04-14
Sorry to have to be the first person to give this book a bad review, but I don't feel this book is anywhere near a five star work. Let me be clear I am not one of these atheists who go around ripping books they've never read because they hate anything that is not completely materialistic. I am very much open to the idea of intelligent design and believe, like the author, that science and faith can exist harmoniously. This book, however, presents very flimsy arguments and does so in a very incoherent way. The Guru-Geek dialogues also brought this book down considerably in my opinion. The author raised a few good points but for the most part this book was highly unreadble, jumped around, and didn't present a very good case.
Makes you think.......2007-01-21
Great insight and a challenge to all belief systems assuming a premis of an open mind. I think it would be interesting to hear reviews of some atheists who may have read this book and how they solve "problems" such as conciousness, conceptual thought and the mind without explaining them away as by-products of unintelligible inert matter giving rise to such intelligent, living and wonderous phenomena.
I think atheists can build a strong case when using their intellect, reason and conceptual thought!
Again I hope for more reviews and discussion about The Wonder of The World.
I still have a few questions that I hope the author will touch upon in his future writings.
wow.......2006-06-09
If you dont believe in God after reading this one you have serious mental issues
What More is There to Say?.......2006-03-20
This book has been praised by Nobel Laureates and numerous scientists and has even caused a prominent atheist, Anthony Flew, to declare that he is now a deist, declaring that ". . . it is likely to be a very long time before such naturalistic [atheistic] explanations [for the origin of life and reproduction] are developed, if indeed there ever could be . . ." A highly cogent and inspiring book.
Brilliant Reason to counter the fallacious "Age of Reason".......2006-01-10
I predict this book will be hailed, even by proponents of naturalism and atheism, as a turning point in the debate regarding the existence of a personal God. Readably and cogently, Varghese sorts through and untangles mental spaghetti using science's own methods. Never dodging awkward questions, but rather, exposing naturalism's illogic, we are led step-by-step to an inevitable conclusion. Perhaps in clearer fashion than other books, Varghese's Wonder of The World is a landmark in turning back the so-called "The Age Reason" that has seduced and poisoned the Western World for almost a century.
Average customer rating:
- A Real Gem!
- An Introduction to Modern Cosmology
- Terrific introduction to cosmology
- A concise and accessible overview.
- An excellent introduction
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An Introduction to Modern Cosmology
Andrew Liddle
Manufacturer: Wiley
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Modern Cosmology
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ASIN: 0470848359 |
Book Description
A concise, accessible introduction to this exciting and dynamic subject.
* Adopts an approach grounded in physics rather than mathematics.
* Includes worked examples and student problems, along with hints for solving them and the numerical answers.
* Many reviewers have commented that this is one of the best 'introductory undergraduate level' texts on the subject and they would all welcome a Second Edition.
Customer Reviews:
A Real Gem!.......2005-12-08
Andrew Liddle's little book is a real gem,and, apart from cosmology students, it should appeal to anyone seriously interested in understanding modern cosmology. Of course, there is an important prerequisite: the reader should have a college-level knowledge of maths and physics. Therefore, this is not a book for the general public, such as, e.g "A Brief History of Time" by S.W. HAWKING, or "The First Three Minutes" by S.WEINBERG.
In fact, the book is divided in two distinct parts: the main body of the book, chapters 1 to 15, and the "Advanced Topics" section. The first part is self-sufficient, and covers all what is required for an honest but thorough understanding of the subject, using Newtonian mechanics only. The second part is meant for those readers who would like to explore a little deeper, but who must be familiar with General Relativity and tensor calculus. It is interesting to note here that the main body of Modern Cosmology can be understood without any reference to Einstein's theory.
As the book is designed for students, the author has added a set of problems (with answers and hints at the end of the book) after each chapter. I consider that solving these problems is a must if one wants to make sure that the subject has been properly assimilated.
Unfortunately, and even though this is the book's second edition, there is a number of errors, which the author has summarized in an Errata list posted on his Home Page on the Web.Therefore, readers should correct the text accordingly before getting on with their reading.
But there is an error which has escaped both the author's and the reviewers scrutiny; it is to be found in paragraph A3.2.2, page 140. Here the subject of Heavy Neutrinos is treated, and the author introduces an "exponential suppression factor" which has the wrong notation,with the temperature term in the numerator of the negative exponent. As a result, one obtains the opposite effect of what is claimed, as this factor increases with the neutrino mass,going from 0 for very small masses to 1 for very large ones. Actually, the "exponential suppression factor" should have the form of equation (12.1), page 92, with the temperature term in the denominator of the exponent.
But even then, the "predicted" neutrino mass of 1 GeV would make the exponential vanish [exp (-1000) = 0] and the neutrino density vanishes as well, instead of becoming equal to 1 as claimed.It seems that the author has a problem with exponential factors:at page 81, it is stated that the exponential in Eq 10.17 "will dominate if the temperature is much greater than the binding energy".In fact, in this case the exponential is very close to 1 and does not dominate.However, this has been taken care of in the Errata list.
I am sure Dr. Liddle, whom I have informed of this new error on 30 November 2005, will remedy the situation by posting an update of paragraph A 3.2.2 on his Home Page.Because as it is, the whole paragraph does not make any sense at all...
PS-On 13 December 2005, Dr Liddle addressed this error in his Errata list.
An Introduction to Modern Cosmology.......2005-08-28
I sent this book back and got my mony back.
Not because it was not a good book, but it was way beyond my mathmatical ability to read it.
This is a very technical book, more geard towards a serious scientist.
Terrific introduction to cosmology.......2005-06-01
That is a very good introduction book to cosmology at an undergraduate level. Although there are not many complicated equations, the physics ideas are very clear. It covers a lot of materials with easy-to-understand languages. The big bang model is the main part, with concise introduction to dark matter/energy, neuclosynthesis, cosmic microwave background, inflation etc. After reading this book, you will have a general idea about most of the concepts in cosmology and about what is going on in modern cosmology. Each chapter is accompanied by some problems, which are good exercise to understand the context. But I think it is a little outdated now, so maybe you should buy the 2nd edition.
A concise and accessible overview........2004-03-29
This is a highly readable introduction to Cosmology. The author states clearly that the approach is grounded in physics rather than mathematics and indeed, any reader with a basic grasp of single-variable calculus would cope with the derivations that are presented. Its ready accessibility would make it an enjoyable introduction for those working on their own wanting more than a 'popular 'account of Cosmology.I have adapted and used some of the material and problems for my year 13 physics class.
The main body of the book is self-contained and requires no further material for the interested reader to get to grips with the rudiments of the standard cosmological models. More complex results are stated without derivation and some are used as the basis for the exercises. The 'Advanced' topics require a little more of the reader and are presented as brief summaries rather than being rigorous. For example ,the chapter on General Relativistic Cosmology is 'for those readers who have experienced some general relativity'. As a teacher of physics,I found this book to be a very useful addition to my library.
An excellent introduction.......2002-08-10
I came across this book because it was required reading for my cosmology course. The book gives a Newtonian (it only briefly mentions the much more complicated General Relativity equations) overview of the current theories about the universe: its mass, its age, its shape and its ultimate destiny. The text is very readable, equations are explained properly and the diagrams are useful. The reader is left with a good impression of why the currently proposed cosmological models are sensible.
The book puts the case for the hot big bang model, which is by far the most popular cosmological model at this time. There is a chapter on the successes of this model: explanation of the cosmic background radiation, universal expansion, and the relative abundance of elements in the early universe. There follows a chapter on the major problems of this model: how come the background radiation looks the same (to within one part in a hundred thousand) everywhere, even when light hasn't had time to travel between all these regions? How did the universe become structured (into things such as stars) when physics predicts that matter should be homogeneously spread? And why does the universe (seemingly) possess the exact right density (to almost infinitessimal precision) to stay flat, as we see it today? Inflation theory offers some help, but at the same time asks a bigger question: which of the many inflation theories (if any) is right? Liddle doesn't go into much detail on this point, but you get a good introduction into what inflation is and why such an odd theory would be proposed.
I'm making it sound as if the big bang model has more problems than it solves, which I don't think it does (heck, it's the best theory we've got). But the problems are more interesting!
On which subject, there are problems (solvable ones!) at the end of each chapter, with brief solutions at the end of the book.
Book Description
Recent discoveries in astronomy, especially those made with data collected by satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, have revolutionized the science of cosmology. These new observations offer the possibility that some long-standing mysteries in cosmology might be answered, including such fundamental questions as the ultimate fate of the universe. Foundations of modern cosmology provides an accessible, thorough and descriptive introduction to the physical basis for modern cosmological theory, from the big bang to a distant future dominated by dark energy. This second edition includes the latest observational results and provides the detailed background material necessary to understand their implications, with a focus on the specific model supported by these observations, the concordance model. Consistent with the book's title, emphasis is given to the scientific framework for cosmology, particularly the basics concepts of physics that underlie modern theories of relativity and cosmology; the importance of data and observations is stressed throughout. The book sketches the historical background of cosmology, and provides a review of the relevant basic physics and astronomy. After this introduction, both special and general relativity are treated, before proceeding to an in-depth discussion of the big bang theory and physics of the early universe. The book includes current research areas, including dark matter and structure formation, dark energy, the inflationary universe, and quantum cosmology. The authors' website (http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~jh8h/Foundations) offers a wealth of supplemental information, including questions and answers, references to other sources, and updates on the latest discoveries.
Customer Reviews:
good seller.......2007-01-16
I order the book relatively close to the date i needed it for class and got it just in time! Thanks a lot!
Hawley is a genius.......2004-05-18
I took the class given by Hawley and he makes the book extremely easy to comprehend. Granted, he wrote it, the man is a hilarious comedic genius. He makes the concepts in the book very simple, and easy to understand. I've learned the concepts before in this book, and havent fully comprehended it. This book made it all come together. Get it!
A serious yet easy to read book.......2003-07-18
This is a serious yet easy to read book on a facinating and popular subject and its main commendation is its accessibility and rigour. It is an excellent antidote to some of the glossy and expensively packeged books by "pop" writers and TV programmes.
As the introduction of the book makes clear, the authors aim for a wide audience for whom Cosmology is not a core discipline. Not only do they do a good job in meeting this goal, but they also present the physical concepts and experimental results in a way that provides new and deep insights to those whose main interest is Physics. For instance, the discussion of the Big Bang and the cosmic models provides an excellent complement to the mathematical presentation of authors like M.V. Berry. Equally, there is a plethora of material that describes experimental results like those for General Relativity: bending of light under the infulence of the sun's gravity, the Eotovos experiment to demonstrate the Equivalence Principle, etc.
The book covers a broad field: Some historical aspects, Special and General Relativity, the Big Bang and various cosmic models, dark matter, and large scale structure.
The glossary and the authors' web site provide further information on the subject.
foundation s of modern cosmology.......2000-09-21
I got this book from my university library. Pretty easy reading considering I'm an engineering student. But then, this book isn't just for physics/astronomy students, as the authors have mentioned. It starts by giving a brief history of cosmology, continuing to current understanding before going to the current problems. The book is not math intensive as it emphasize on understanding the concepts. That's why it is something like a popular-science book. For those who have an interest in cosmology, consept-wise, I recommend this title. Those requiring intensive math, look elsewhere. The other cosmology book I've read is by Martin Roos.
Average customer rating:
- Understanding, not just pretty pictures.
- The best book on graduate cosmology.
- Great text
- the BEST book on cosmology for the advanced student
- Approachable Cosmology
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Modern Cosmology
Scott Dodelson
Manufacturer: Academic Press
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An Introduction to Modern Cosmology
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ASIN: 0122191412 |
Book Description
Modern Cosmology begins with an introduction to the smooth, homogeneous universe described by a Friedman-Robertson-Walker metric, including careful treatments of dark energy, big bang nucleosynthesis, recombination, and dark matter. From this starting point, the reader is introduced to perturbations about an FRW universe: their evolution with the Einstein-Boltzmann equations, their generation by primordial inflation, and their observational consequences. These consequences include the anisotropy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) featuring acoustic peaks and polarization, the matter power spectrum with baryonic wiggles, and their detection via photometric galaxy surveys, redshift distortions, cluster abundances, and weak lensing. The book concludes with a long chapter on data analysis.
Modern Cosmology is the first book to explain in detail the structure of the acoustic peaks in the CMB, the E/B decomposition in polarization which may allow for detection of primordial gravity waves, and the modern analysis techniques used on increasingly large cosmological data sets. Readers will gain the tools needed to work in cosmology and learn how modern observations are rapidly revolutionizing our picture of the universe.
* Provides foundations, calculations, and interpretations which illuminate current thinking in cosmology
* Covers the major advances in cosmology over the past decade
* Includes over 100 unique, pedagogical figures
Customer Reviews:
Understanding, not just pretty pictures........2007-08-10
I am enjoying this book a great deal. I enjoy the images we get from Hubble and other sources as much as anyone, but understanding comes from math. Things always seem more clear to me once I understand the equations. BTW my math skills are rudimentary relative to professionals scientists.
The best book on graduate cosmology........2006-03-18
I am currently teaching graduate cosmology. Modern cosmology is an extraordinarily beautiful piece of physics that has allowed cosmologists to learn from observations fundamental facts about our universe. Graduate students want to understand this beautiful subject themselves. Dodelson's book is the one that delivers that understanding. Of the several graduate cosmology texts out there, this one is unquestionably the best.
The book is uncompromisingly a graduate level text. The material is intrinsically hard, but Dodelson does a remarkable job of taking the reader through it. The problem sets at the end of each chapter (some with solutions) are well thought out, and fill in many gaps. Each chapter concludes with a thoughtful summary and a guide to further reading. If you are going to teach a graduate level cosmology class with this book, then you should impress on your students that the text is not easy, but it's the real unwatered-down thing.
Great text.......2004-06-25
I haven't used another cosmology text for comparison, but have been very pleased with this one. The text is everywhere clear, reasonably concise, and the author uses good judgment in determining which calculations to present as examples and which to reserve for practice, all of which make this a very easy text to read. My only reservations are that necessary assumptions and approximations do not always seem fully justified, and the reader is often asked to wait until later in the text for certain approximations to be justified, which at times disrupts the logical flow of the text. The text is also somewhat incomplete in the sense that Dodelson does not always start from first principles. In my case I considered this an advantage as it allowed for quicker reading and less overhead before important results are presented. The discussion of inflation was less complete than I had hoped, but sufficient to prepare me for the literature.
the BEST book on cosmology for the advanced student.......2004-01-10
Without question, Dodelson's book beats out a herd of books at the present redshift for the de rigeur text to be bandied about by grad students. I haven't looked back at Padmanabhan's Structure formation in awhile, but it was written before the COBE discoveries, and so it's a bit "old fashioned" now; there are a number of other books worth looking at, of course.
Couple Dodelson with Kolb & Turner's Early Universe text (which has some more in depth treatments of QCD- and high energy-related effects such as the axion), and perhaps with the old -- but still excellent -- Peebles book on large scale structure, and you're ready to hit the ground running in the literature.
Especially commendable aspects of Dodelson's book:
1. A great literature review at the end of each chapter allows you to dip deeper (or clarify things.) Dodelson should also be praised for his evenhandedness.
2. His in depth solutions -- meaning, you and he crunch the algebra together down the page -- are a great antidote to the "it can be shown" attitude of many cosmology papers (and sometimes textbooks!)
PS: this book got a really negative, arrogant review in I think it was Physics Today. The reviewer said we should all wait for Steven Weinberg to rewrite his Gravitation book. No thanks. Look, Dodelson's book is not as poetic as Misner Thorne and Wheeler, and it's not as pretentious as a host of others. It's a practical, pragmatic set of tools. I just want to reiterate that, since this book has been published, nearly every one of the grad students in our department carries it around. The proof is in the pudding: this is a tremendously useful book.
Approachable Cosmology.......2003-06-19
This book is a must-have for the cosmos-curious. Well organized and indexed and excellently written, the author puts difficult information within reach of the student who aspires to understand one of the most complex disciplines. A superb accomplishment by a fine teacher and consummate scientist that should become the definitive text for all would-be cosmologists.
Book Description
The classic of contemporary science writing by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist explains what happened when the universe began, and how we know.
Customer Reviews:
A book that satisfies no one........2007-07-30
There's no questioning Weinberg's knowledge, but he doesn't present it well. This is a book that, unfortunately, can't satisfy anyone: it's too technical for the lay reader, too simplified for the scientist. It's also thirty years old, and a lot has happened in cosmology since. For those looking for just an overview of the history and science, try Timothy Ferris, Brian Greene, or Stephen Hawking.
Steven Weinberg: Nobel leaureate and biographer of nature.......2007-07-04
In 1979 Steven Weinberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.
This book is his 1976 take on the origins of the universe.
To understand why Weinberg was honored we need to understand first how nature is organized. As it stands, there are four fundamental forces in nature:
1) Gravity -- best described by Albert Einstein in his 1916 general theory of relativity -- gravity is the property massive objects have to distort the contours of space time itself.
2) The strong nuclear force -- which operates to hold the nucleus of all atoms together.
3) Electromagnatism --still best described by James Clerk Maxell over 100 years ago whose unification of electricity and magnetism actually prompted the likes of Albert Einstein to his turn of the 20th century discoveries.
4) The weak nuclear force -- which operates among leptons.
It was these last two forces that Weinberg preseciently forecast the unification of in 1971 and for which he won the Nobel prize.
As has been rightly pointed out by other reviewers, this book is a democartically short 149 pages making it accessible, well, to anyone, willing to take the time to read them.
And in exchange for that time, one is rewarded with Weinberg's then existing take on the origins of the universe (most of which still holds up) as well as is thoughts on the direction of physics itself.
Long story short: Weinberg said that the Big Bang was like a great freezing which hid the original constituent elements of nature in a great phase transition. So just trying to infer which atoms went where in a glass of water from their current status as ice cubes we're necessarily a little at a loss trying to figure out what todays hadrons were doing prior to the end of the first billionth of second after the Big Bang.
Interestingly enough Weinberg's bottom line remains todays bottom line: we don't know.
Have to disagree.......2006-11-21
This is NOT a book for non-physicists. I have a doctorate in Dentistry and began reading the book, thinking it would become less obtuse. Ten pages later, I resorted to flipping each page in the hope that I would find something that made sense to a "layman"...no such luck. It could have been written in a medieval Persian language and I would have learned as much from it.
Failure to Planck?!.......2006-11-15
Steven Weinberg is without a doubt the closet thing
we have to a Newton or Einstein alive today.
But he isn't perfect as much as his books are almost required reading in physics!
This popularization was imitated by others...
Weinberg made the big bang go off in modern times.
But he fails to mention a basic in modern cosmology:
the Planck scale.
A Classic--Any Edition.......2006-04-18
True that the first version of this book--appeard some time ago, that does not diminish its usefulness to the layman or person interested in the history of the popularization of cosmology--which is a steady business with many competitors.
To find one such book so clearly written is valuable in itself, even as a landmark in this stream of such publications. As such, it belongs on any amateur astronomer's bookshelf, as well as any true scholar who wishes to place more recent findings in their appropriate context. I can add one personal note, my father, Dr. Ralph A. Alpher, commented to me when Dr. Weinberg's book appeared that this was the first book to have the history of cosmology through 1977 "right." And he was in a position to know...on that basis alone, I'll recommend it--if you can find the early paperback edition, it is a fun and short read, also.
Highly recommended!
Customer Reviews:
Cream of the Crop.......2006-07-09
I read Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" way back yonder and was impressed with it. This work far surpasses that book and is one of the most lucid I have read about the giants of astronomy. This book ought to be required reading!
A Masterwork.......2006-01-23
Koestler has written a superb summary of the early history of science. The views expressed are certainly partial but it is almost impossible not to be transported by Koestler's prose into a world inhabited by Aristotle, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler and Galileo. It is a wonderful exploration of the progress of science and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history and philosophy of science.
A GREAT INTELLECT, PERHAPS, BUT A HIGHLY PREJUDICED ONE!.......2005-10-04
Arthur Koestler was touted throughout his life by many for his courage, insight and style, qualities he exhibited in works such as Darkness At Noon. But in this book, he appears more interested in swiping at great scientists with a broad axe than in providing unbiased insight regarding their works and achievements.
He has a special enmity for Galileo, whom he accuses of arrogance, ego-centricity, outright falsehoods, and a wide range of various admirable qualities. The author uses Galileo as a poster boy for everything he dislikes or mistrusts about scholars, stating "... scholars have always been prone to manias and obsessions, and inclined to cheat about details; but impostures like Galileo's are rare in the annals of science." He launched into this tirade simply because Galileo was mistaken in his theory of the cause of tides, almost ignoring the fact that Galileo was correct about everything else.
Keep in mind that Koestler wrote this in 1958, 320 years after Galileo's trial and 35 years BEFORE the Catholic Church admitted that Galileo was correct about supporting Copernicus.
Several books have been written since that treat the Galileo situation in a much more enlightened manner, especially Galileo, Science & The Church and Galileo Heretic. Both are at least as readable as Koestler, fare more broad-minded and much more intellectually honest.
Finally, I found it both amusing and frustrating that much of Koestler's attacks on Galileo et al is based on their arrogance and self-confidence; I have never read a text more arrogant in its tone than this one, and Galileo, Kepler, Newton and the rest possessed far greater qualifications for their statements and opinions, in the scientific arena, than Koestler. As someone pointed out, Koestler was a great advocate of ESP, a belief that still retains far less evidence of its existence than the most imaginative conclusions and theories of Galileo and the rest.
If this is Koestler's best example of intellectual honesty and perception, the rest of his works are surely easily dismissed.
How did I miss this book?.......2005-05-09
How did I miss this masterpiece? Perhaps, because it is not referenced in all the histories of astonomy and cosmology I have read; it gets short shrift from the academics. Koestler was not an astronomer. Thank heavens! May we have more such amateurs!
This is the best history of asronomy and one of the wisest books I have ever read. . Koestler applies his knowledge, his life, his experiences, to this topic, and places the astonomy of each period beautifully within the context of the politics, religion and philosophy of the time. And shows, with crystalline clarity, how one (philosophy) could pollute the rest.
It is the best written book I have ever read on a scientific topic. On almost every page, the eloquence, intelligence and skill of Koestler illuminates a point obscured or ignored in other treatments. He brilliantly shows how astonomy suffered the same decline as the other sciences and technologies, for the same reasons, and puts this in the context of a collapsed Grecian and a collapsing Roman world seeking refuge in religious obscurantism for 1,200 years.
He laments the same point Carl Sagan makes in "Cosmos"; Plato and Aristotle cost us a thousand years of technical progress..Sagan points out that the people who built the medieval cathedrals lived in housing and health conditions worse than the Greeks. Koestler wryly observes that we were delayed the benefits of Satellites and Hydrogen bombs for the same interval.
He treats evenly with all the icons we have learned to revere. Copernicus was a coward and a lecherouos churchman, who opens his great book with a clumsy lie. Kepler was almost a raving lunatic (for good reason). Galileo is described as one of the truly offensive and annoying men of science, rarely giving credit, treated better than he deserved by the Church, and finally caught up by his defence of a book which he probably did not read. Amazingly, Galileo was no astonomer at all; just one who happened to do some early telescopic observations, and then attempted to establish a monopoly on observations for himself.
My eternal thanks to Owen Gingerich for his reference to this book. The jury is out, in my mind, on the other two volumes of his technical triptych, but this is an undoubted masterpiece.
Everyone should read it.......2003-01-09
Fascinating account of the history of astronomy through the discovery of classical mechanics by Kepler, Galileo and Newton. We may see it as the history of the replacement of religious-based dogmatism by what physicists today call the Galilean approach: the discovery and consequent mathematical description of nature throughy repeated, identical experiments or observations. This is the book that wheted my appetite for the history of physics. For the serious reader, there are also Julian Barbour's Absolute or Relative Motion and Fred Hoyle's history of Copernicus's contribution. Of interest as well, if less exciting, are Galileo's Dialogues.
Customer Reviews:
The Timaeus and Process and Reality.......2006-12-11
If you can read closely, this is not as difficult as many would have you believe. It is a brilliant analysis of that which comes before any study of physics and how you can understand general and special relativity theory through meta(that which comes before)physics. A wonderfu exercise is to read it side by side with Plato's TIMAEUS. Doing so will blow your socks off.
Poor writing style.......2005-03-23
"Whitehead" doesn't refer to something on the face. Although, like puss spewing therefrom, the book is a morass of grotesque prose. What is Whitehead getting at that so many scholars seem to ignore completely? At the core of Whitehead's philosophy is "bifurcation of nature." From this, Ph.D's have waxed eloquent and stated, "Aha, Whitehead is a panentheist," meaning, the universe contains a god like a spirit in the body. Hmmmm. Modern democrats espouse an unusually similar theory that cannot be coincidence. Nevertheless, everyone has missed the point. First and foremost, to his credit, Whitehead had great command over mathematics and modern ideas in science. More noteworthy is the fact that quantum mechanics (micro physics) and relativity theory (macro physics) cannot be reconciled (unless we use Hermann Weyl's guage theory, which implements methods from group theory, which is nothing but mathematical formalism and reconstruction with no physical meaning). The theories are irreconcilable since relativity predicts via E=mc squared that an electron, which approaches the speed of light, must approach infinity. Yet, the physical fact is that an electron is of finite weight (although, I think a clue to this problem is in nuclear fission, aka the fact of the atom bomb). Whitehead resolved to accept that both quantum mechanics and relativity theory are both true, or rather, complete unto themselves for the domain of physical phenomena they addressed, and resolved to accept they cannot be reconciled. This resolution is formulated in his fundamental hypothesis about the bifurcation of reality. Case closed.
"The shock of a great philosopher.".......2001-08-26
I approached this book as an influence to Ken Wilber. In his book, SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY, he recognizes Whitehead "as one of the first great philosophers of vision-logic" (p. 191). As Editor Donald Sherburne acknowledges in the Preface to this edition, PROCESS AND REALITY "is highly technical and far from easy to understand" (p. v). In fact, Whitehead (1861-1947) makes reading Ken Wilber seem easy.
First published as a series of lectures in 1929, PROCESS AND REALITY sets forth Whitehead's philosophy of speculatve metaphysics. "Speculative Philosophy," he writes, "is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted" (p. 3). Whitehead integrates the the works of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant (p. 39), as he looks into the nature of all things as an ongoing process. (About Plato, Whitehead says, "the safest general characterization of the whole Western philosophic tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.")
I do not profess to fully understand Whitehead, but his basic premise appears to be that reality is in an organic process of becoming, and is never complete. That is, he asserts the many become one and are then increased by one. So, too, God is a process of becoming. Whitehead's philosophy is revolutionary. "Philosophy never reverts to its old position after the shock of a great philosopher" (p. 11), he writes. I have given this book a four-star rating only because Whitehead's writing style is difficult and at times impenetrable, which detracts from his five-star content.
G. Merritt
The Brilliance of Hard Work and Imagination.......2000-12-18
Early in this century American philosophy made a 'linguistic' turn that determined the direction it would take all the way to the present day. In the spirit of the times, language made its way to the forefront of philosophy, the end result being (among other things) Positivism and a scientistic approach to the Geisteswissenschaften. It is a turn many of us, looking back, wish it had never made. Because of this turn, certain philosophers and ways of doing philosophy all but stopped being considered. Among these philosophers were Dewey and James. These thinkers have in recent decades been resurrected by contemporary neopragmatists, most notably Richard Rorty, who look back at the arid desert of mid-twentieth century philosophy and wonder how far we have come after all. To quote Rorty (who is certainly no Whiteheadian), American philosophical thought 'began taking its cue from Frege rather than Locke.' Broadly considered, this meant that language rather than experience, mind rather than body, was taken to be the most serious matter for philosophy.
Whitehead stayed with Locke. Whitehead wanted to critique most Modern philosophy with what he termed the 'philosophy of organism;' that is, Whitehead insisted that experience or 'feeling' rather than disembodied thinking was the hallmark of human existence, and that all experience was subjective. Now, this does not sound like Locke. Anyone writing this side of modernity knows that Locke was the quintessential modern philosopher, with all the baggage that entails. But when Whitehead wrote in the preface to Process and Reality that `the writer who most fully anticipated the main positions of the philosophy of organism is John Locke,' he was stressing the fact that Locke discarded metaphysics, seeking rather to look at what was actually happening, as far as he could tell.
In many ways, and though they wrote at the same time but in complete isolation from each other's thought, Whitehead and Heidegger were searching for the same thing, the thing both philosophers thought that Plato and Aristotle had known, but that had been forgotten in the intervening centuries: what it actually meant to experience something, or, as Cooper puts it, how `to make intelligible our immediate experience so that we can discover how it is possible to have any experience of the actual world.' Rather than reading Whitehead as an elaborate and old-school metaphysician, one ought to read him as a phenomenological empiricist, if such a beast exists, and thus find an answer to the people who dismiss Whitehead as `behind the times,' people who simply don't bother to actually read Whitehead.
It is true that thinkers still committed to a reductionist/linguistic approach to philosophy will not see Whitehead's importance as a critic of closed systems (Whitehead's is expressly open and revisable, one reason it has endured as long as it has without being widely read in philosophy departments). It is also true that American philosophy left Whitehead behind. However, the blind alleys linguistic analysis and positivism lead us into should cause us to wonder if we were led in the right directions, or if we should have left in the first place. Leaving something behind certainly does not necessarily mean progressing beyond it. Whitehead's goal was expressly NOT the goal of philosophy in America after his time, though Whitehead's goal had been an important part of James's `Radical Empiricism,' ironically. Whitehead looked back to James and Dewey, and Bergson on the continent, hoping `to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.' Present-day neopragmatism, noting how vapid and unsatisfying most rationalist and linguistic philosophy has become in American thought, also looks back to Dewey and James, but to the pragmatism rather than to the empiricism of these two masters. It has become axiomatic that the only way to read James and Dewey is as pragmatists, after all.
However, the axiom is not true. A `rediscovery' of Whitehead by contemporary American philosophy might lead to another and equally valid reading of James and Dewey. James, Dewey, and Whitehead were thinkers of the same ilk. If you like any two, you should at least consider reading the third. Similarly, the relations between Heidegger and Whitehead have only recently been resurfacing, and deserve closer scrutiny. Analytic philosophy never took seriously the questions raised by Heidegger because they weren't precise enough for logical analysis. When a grandfather of the analytic movement, Wittgenstein, began distancing himself from his earlier work, his own disciples balked because, they said, he seemed to be retreating into metaphysics! It is much more likely, however, that Wittgenstein realized that life cannot be reduced to propositions and truth tables. This was also Whitehead's view. Whitehead was also not precise enough for the analytic philosophers (I always wonder who is). Whether or not the fact that he did not measure up to their standards (and still does not) should be seen as an indictment or a complement remains to be seen.
Whitehead is an immensely difficult writer. Hosinski's Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance (1993) is a brilliant introductory work, and I highly recommend it, especially if you have to read Whitehead for a class Sherburne's Key is also very helpful, though you get a lot of Sherburne, too. At issue is usually Whitehead's neologisms. To draw another analogy between Heidegger and Whitehead, however, both men were notorious for creating new words because what they wanted to explain was both so uncanny and yet so obvious that the old words didn't work. Don't let the language scare you away. Whitehead rewards hard work, and you will likely never forget what you learn from him. The ideas that we are beginning to take much more seriously these days about holistic thinking, interconnectedness, interdisciplinarity, non-dualism, commensurability between science and religion, and creativity were all covered by him seventy years ago. Don't let your professors tell you that Whitehead is an outmoded metaphysician. His `philosophy of organism' is as inherently open-ended, properly understood, as anything passing today as postmodernism. Read Whitehead.
uplifting but difficult...........2000-06-02
Whitehead carries on the tradition of turgidity inaugurated by Hegel and even buys into the philosophy-as-system game; on the plus side, however, his key concepts make sense, especially his emphasis creativity and on reality as process. If you're new to Whitehead, read someone else's stuff about him before attempting this book.
Customer Reviews:
The best of it's kind.......2007-09-04
The best of this genre, Stephen makes a strong case for the Cosmological, Teleological, and the Design Argument for God.
Confusing deism with Christianity.......2007-07-05
This is an important book, as the other reviews show, and I cannot add much to them. But I have noticed that Dr. Barr has not distinguished his theological viewpoint from Deism. Many people who understand that materialism is not science nonetheless mistake Deism for Christianity. It seems that he is saying that God initially created the world with all of the plans for all of modern life and humanity inherent in matter, and did not need to intervene.
This, of course, denies Christianity as God sending His son. This may not be what Dr. Barr meant, but why did he not say so? It appears he totally misunderstands traditional Christianity, in spite of his claim to be a Roman Catholic.
Dr. Barr argues for evidence for God in physics, but does not adequately deal with the basic problem he brings up, namely that no one can see evidence for God in the world if he begins by mistaking materialism for science, as most scientists do. Also, it is easy to let your eyes get glazed over at his math, but that is my problem, not his.
Another Excellent Intelligent Design Book.......2007-06-04
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith is another new Intelligent Design (ID) book that focuses on the evidence for ID in the physical creation instead of the biological creation as is common in ID books. As my area is biology, I feel ID is stronger in this area, but this book was very convincing to me, a non-physicist. My main concern is most of the arguments that Barr uses have already been covered in some detail in the ID literature, thus I was familiar with many of the arguments. Nonetheless, Barr covers them in more detail than most ID books and his work is better documented. If one wants to learn about ID, this is an excellent book that presents the arguments in a very readable and convincing way. I learned about it from my ID friends who recommended it highly. Also, a concern is Barr is not a biologist and tends to repeat some common misinformation about those who have problems with Darwinism. It must be added that he often adds the cravat "Dawkins says" or Dennett calls" or related. Barr does a good job showing the "age old argument from design" has historically been by far one of the most compelling arguments for Gods existence and then shows why this argument is still very compelling (see chapters 9 and 10). He also explains in an excellent, but short, discussion why abiogenesis as required by Darwinism and most orthodox evolutionists today is not supported by science (page 74). The first link in evolution is a missing link and "decades of attempts to solve this problem have borne little fruit" (page 74). Barr adds the fact is the "origin of life problem is made very hard by the fact that that first form 'primitive' life form was probably already enormously completed." I would add not "probably', but, from all that is known today, the first life must have been "enormously completed." Highly recommended for anyone wanting to learn more about ID.
Great Product! .......2007-03-09
Great book, and it was in the condition described by the seller.
Modern Physics Affirms Ancient Faith........2007-02-15
For several centuries now a debate has raged between materialists and theists over the question of the existence of God. For a time it was widely suspected among the educated public that modern science had finally disproven the existence of God and that faith was unwarranted. In recent times, this debate has come to a head yet again, with many notable scientists publishing books making the case against faith. However, a growing number of scientists are recognizing some important implications of recent discoveries in cosmology, theoretical physics, and mathematics that actually (ironically for the materialist!) make faith credible and severely weaken the case for materialism. It is in light of these discoveries that a book such as this is very important.
_Modern Physics and Ancient Faith_ by particle physicist Stephen M. Barr makes the case that modern physics lends credence to faith and weakens the case for materialism. It should be noted that while Barr is a Roman Catholic and does quote extensively from Catholic thinkers (Augustine, Aquinas, Chesterton, etc.) and church documents, that the case he makes here is really for theism itself (as traditionally understood) and thus his arguments should be palatable to any religious sympathetic to this viewpoint. To begin with, Barr makes several important points about materialism as a creed. First, Barr notes the commonly held idea that religion and science do not occupy the same domain. He finds such an idea too superficial in certain respects. Barr also refutes another commonly held idea that materialism is in fact synonymous with the scientific enterprise itself. It is this idea that Barr finds to be the most problematic and which he will refute in this book. It is also widely believed among the educated classes that science and religion exist in a state of warfare (it is against this claim that Barr will argue and he will refer to materialism as an "anti-religious mythology"). Barr will show throughout this book that ultimately materialism rests upon unproven assertion - it reduces to the circularity "materialism is true because materialism is true" and thus cannot be really held to be rationally based. To begin with, Barr considers the alleged conflict between faith and reason. He notes the importance of reason in the early Christian fathers (including Augustine), especially in the thought of Saint Aquinas, and even in certain Protestant theologians. Barr also demonstrates that throughout history Catholics (and indeed all religious) have played an important role in the development of science (indeed it may even be said that certain Catholic thinkers gave rise to the modern scientific endeavor itself!). Further, Barr shows that many of the alleged conflicts between the church and science (in which mythology holds that the church tried to stifle science) are in fact mythical. The only case that Barr believes actually involved a conflict between the church and science is the case of Galileo. However, once one looks beyond the myth and to the actual history of this event itself, one sees that it occurred for more political and personal reasons and had less to do with an apparent conflict than is commonly believed. Barr also maintains that the Biblical understanding of God allowed for modern science to develop (in that the pagan animistic worldview was uprooted). Following this discussion, Barr turns to more modern developments (particularly at the forefront of physics) and presents five "plot twists" which severely undercut the credibility of the materialist viewpoint. In the second section of the book, Barr examines what modern physics has to say about the beginning of the universe. Barr presents the Big Bang model and explains how such a model was developed and came to fit the facts. (Interestingly, the Big Bang model was denied for many years by important scientists, likely because of the unsavory theological implications of a universe with a beginning. One may note the irony among a group of people who would maintain that denying such widely accepted theories as Darwinism is lunacy, but denying the Big Bang is legitimate.) It turns out that to avoid some of the implications of the Big Bang model, the materialist must resort to certain highly questionable procedures (invoking unobservable multiple universes for example). In particular, to avoid such implications Hawking (and others) have resorted to extremely questionable methodology by positing unobservable (even in principle!) entities. This should make the religious believer less embarrassed in talking about unobservable supernatural entities. It is hypocritical to allow for one (merely to save materialism) and not the other. (If cosmology is a science, then parapsychology is also a science. So, I say they should both be regarded as science.) Furthermore, this puts to bed once and for all such arguments as the "God of the gaps" argument and the "wishful thinking" argument. (They apply to both!) The third section is devoted to the argument from design. The author makes the case for design, noting the presence of extremely miniscule probabilities involved in the creation of life, various anthropic coincidences (another case where many mainstream scientists opposed the development of science to maintain materialism), and the beauty of the laws of nature (as well as the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in describing nature). He shows some of the arguments against design made by materialists (often invoking the anthropic principle or even "blind chance") but notes how all of these are problematic. In the case of Darwinism, he does not espouse dogma but maintains that it remains a scientifically open question (noting the doubts of such famous scientists as Wolfgang Pauli. Kurt Godel also doubted!). The fourth section of this book is devoted to the nature of man. First, the author presents the materialist case (allegedly science has "dethroned man"). However, he shows how problematic such a case is, emphasizing our intellect, free will, and reason. The author makes the case for free will, explaining how quantum theory clears new ground for free will. The author notes how paradoxes arise in those who maintain the case for determinism. He also notes the common sense objection against determinism ("If a man should give me arguments that I do not see, though I could not answer them, should I believe that I do not see?" - Johnson to Boswell). The author then turns his attention to difficulties that arise for those who maintain that matter can understand. This is the artificial intelligence debate. Making use of the reality of universals and mathematical Platonism, the author presents a powerful argument against artificial intelligence. The author presents a similarly powerful argument against the idea that the mind is merely a computer (this is the Lucas argument making use of Godel's famous incompleteness results). Following this the author discusses quantum theory. He shows how quantum mechanics (as understand by the standard Copenhagen interpretation) can be used to present an argument against materialism, and that in order to avoid it the materialist must resort to some highly questionable assumptions. The author also considers some of the alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics (the pilot wave theory of Bohm, the many worlds interpretation, etc.), but ultimately he finds all of them unconvincing. The author ends by suggesting that a pattern is emerging. And, he notes how materialism is ultimately reduced to unproven assertion (it cannot answer the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"). The author ends with three appendices: the first covers "God, Time, and Creation" from a Thomistic perspective, the second deals with various attempts to explain the beginning of time scientifically (noting the importance of quantum vacuum fluctuations in this respect, but ultimately showing difficulties for such accounts and for materialism generally), and a third appendix explaining Godel's theorems.
As can be seen from reading this book, one can no longer say that science has finally eliminated religious belief. Indeed, recent developments in physics, cosmology, and mathematics seem to indicate the exact opposite. The only problem that could possibly arise for religious belief in this respect, I belief, would occur if a dogmatic materialist opposition managed to fully take control of the scientific enterprise. However, so long as there remains the freedom to quest after the truth, this possibility is not likely.
Book Description
Is there a higher power in the universe? What happens to us when we die? Leading physicist Frank J. Tipler tackles these questions and more in an astonishing and profoundly important book that scientifically proves the existence of God and the physical resurrection of the dead.
Customer Reviews:
Insurmountable Blabberdash.......2007-08-06
A collection of poorly edited lines of arguement that go off at a tangent to each other. The relationships between the different ideas are barely demonstrated and proven properly before the synthesized new idea is used as a launching-pad for another discussion on another 'breath-taking' idea. He does not address many of the fundamental issues of religion. He also does not elucidate his definition of 'God', which handicaps my understanding of his point of view, and therefore, the intention of the whole book.
Very well-educated, full-tilt lunatic.......2007-05-12
This book is different. Its author is a very well educated scientist. He makes what appears, page to page, to be a logical and scientific argument in favor of the immortality of the soul. The book has many entertaining moments, and it is certainly an intriguing brain teaser.
However, I am sorry, in the end, it is just a really up-market version of Elvis in the UFOS. This guy is flat out nuts. And his argument does not really connect science with religion in any recognizabler manner. Rather, it is a weirdly personal vision of how, at end of the Universe, when everything is crunching into the opposite of the Big Bang, giant computers in the sky will virtually replicate all of us, as software on their infinite hardware. Kind of the Book of Revelations, re-written by a geek, with all the poetry taken out of it.
Like I said, the guy is nuts. He makes one logical leap after another, and goes off to a conclusion that just makes no sense. He is absolutely ignorant of the religious and theological literature. What he is basically doing is making a highly personal argument, based upon his own speculations which were loosely inspired by some of science's recent findings. Not really worth reading, unless you have a taste for well educated lunatics making weird arguments.
unmitigated drivel.......2007-04-14
The science fiction religion that Frank Tipler invented in this book is as puerile and Alice-in-Wonderland as the science fiction religion invented a generation ago by L. Ron Hubbard for the avowed purpose of parting fools from their money. But unlike Hubbard, Tipler is not a conscious humbug peddling whatever Big Lie the gullible will swallow. He appears to believe that his undisciplined speculation is a plausible extrapolation of the laws of physics.
As far as I can determine, Tipler's book is written in English. At least, the individual words are English. But they are put together in a manner reminiscent of the gibberish Evangelicals tout as "speaking in tongues."
According to Tipler (page 1), "I shall show clearly how physics will permit the resurrection to eternal life of everyone who has lived, is living, and will live." If any reader believes that Tipler succeeded in doing that, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn that I think will interest him. Tipler reaches the conclusion that physics proves the existence of God by starting from the assumption that physics proves the existence of God. Even such other peddlers of pseudoscientific theobabble as William Dembski and Michael Behe have refrained from endorsing Tipler's mushroom fantasy.
Tipler's Imagination Crosses the Universe.......2007-01-16
This book may stretch plausibility a little but it has some good practical suggestions for colonising the universe in the future. Sending a 100g universal constructor and computer together with Earthly genetic material at 0.9c to neighbouring star systems and beyond is appealing, but a little further in the future than anticipated in the book. What are the chances that a von Neuman probe as described will survive such a journey to a neighbouring star through the interstellar medium? Every (atomic) particle it encounters will appear as a cosmic ray, let alone small specks of dust! Something more is needed to solve this problem. I believe also that Dr Tippler's contention that there are no other living species out there is probably incorrect, and he therefore falls into the human-centric theories and assertions of old. Nevertheless, a good read, with its main contribution being speculative means of survival and proliferation in a future universe.
A Loooong string of "if's".......2006-10-05
The thesis in this book is that God (aka "the Omega Point" - an omniscient entity reminiscent of "Vger" in Star Trek) does not currently exist (but will develop at some point in the future) and will choose to replicate (emulate) exact duplicates of every human who has ever lived, in a virtual-reality Heaven. I made a list of the "if's" mentioned in this book, that all have to happen for this to occur:
IF
*strong (indistinguishable from human) artificial intelligence is possible
AND IF
*we can develop self-replicating interstellar probes
AND IF
*humans can be completely grown/raised/educated from stored DNA
AND IF
*on every planet, these seeded human colonists accept the destiny we assigned to them
AND IF
*nanotechnology is developed
AND IF
*250-gigwatt lasers are feasible
AND IF
*cost of materials relative to wages drops exponentially every 50 years
AND IF
*antimatter exists, can be feasibly manufactured, and harnessed as a means of propulsion
AND IF
*the universe is closed (will eventually contract)
AND IF
*a virtual "emulation" of a person in a computer is the same "consciousness" as the original person
AND IF
*all information in the physical universe can be retrieved without loss or distortion
AND IF
*a simulation of a living being also recreates perfectly its unexpressed internal states
AND IF
*emulations of every person in history can be made without also re-creating their diseases, conflicting ideologies, etc.
AND IF
*the cost of doing good is not significantly greater than the cost of doing evil, then an omniscient entity will choose the good
AND IF
*intelligent beings in the far future will have the desire to resurrect us to a life we will enjoy
THEN
on this basis, we might have hope of eternal life, "heaven," and a benevolent god.
If the thesis of this book is true, it won't matter what you believed anyway - resurrection is inevitable/inescapable. But personally I'm not going to bank my eternal existence on all these dice rolling the right way, billions of millenia from now. In my view, this requires much more "faith" than simply trusting in the conventional claim of Christianity...In my opinion, "Pascal's Wager" is a much better bet.
Books:
- The Wars of Gods and Men: Book III of the Earth Chronicles
- The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy
- This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future
- Traditional Mexican Style Interiors (Schiffer Design Book)
- Tycho & Kepler
- Universe: Stars and Galaxies w/Student CD & Starry Night CD: featuring Starry Night Backyard and Deep Space Explorer
- When Time Began: Book V of the Earth Chronicles
- Wildlife Ecology and Management (5th Edition)
- Wildlife Issues in a Changing World, Second Edition
- Workouts For Working People: How You Can Get in Great Shape While Staying Employed
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Tempest
- Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook
- Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective, Volume II
- Los Gusanos: A Novel
- History: Fiction or Science
- Molecular Biology of the Gene, Fifth Edition
- MONK SWIMMING, A: A MEMOIR
- Tina the Ballerina Sticker Paper Doll
- Its Never Too Late to Be Happy: The Psychology of Self-Reparenting
- Field guide to intermountain rushes
Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory And the Search for Unity in Physical Law
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design
Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes
