The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics - Hardcover

Klein, Etienne; Lachieze-Rey, Marc; Reisinger, Axel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019512085X ISBN 13: 9780195120851

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

What could quantum mechanics have in common with the philosophical musings of the ancient Greeks? In our age of multimillion-dollar supercolliders, it's hard to imagine that modern physics owes anything to thinkers who predate Descartes. But French physicists Etienne Klein and March Lachieze-Rey see an unbroken thread running from antiquity to the present--an ongoing search, throughout the history of science, for unity.
In The Search for Unity the authors reveal how the quest for the One has driven all the great breakthroughs in science. They show how the Greeks searched for the fundamental element in all things; how Galileo unified the earth with the heavens, by discovering valleys and mountains on the moon; and how Newton created a single theory to describe the motion of the celestial bodies. With unequaled clarity, they explore the work of the most famous unifier of all, Albert Einstein, who melded space and time into a combined space-time concept, and then embarked on an unsuccessful search for a single theory to explain all the physical laws of the universe. Throughout the book, the authors stress the esthetic motives of scientists, how they recognize truth through apprehension of mathematical beauty. And in tracing the quest for unity up to the present day, they illuminate the bizarre workings of quantum mechanics and the sticky definition of reality itself at the subatomic level.
A grand unification of all interactions still awaits discovery--but as Klein and Lachieze-Rey show, the search itself is as fascinating as the end result may ever be.

About this title

About the Author

Etienne Klein and Marc Lachieze-Rey are both scientists with the Atomic Energy Commission in Sacey, France. Axel Reisinger is a scientist at Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company, in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Reviews

According to French physicists Klein and Lachi?ze-Rey, the desire to find similarities among seemingly disparate phenomena has long formed the backbone of scientific inquiry. To prove their point, the authors survey historyAfrom the ancient Greek fascination with primordial elements to today's search for the Theory of EverythingAto demonstrate the integral role of unity to the scientific method. Throughout the book, they exhibit an unusual ability to honor the claims of both holists, who see reductionism as a form of life-denying asceticism, and zealots, who believe the universe can be described in four equations. However, the authors themselves often fail to properly balance the abstract and the specific. Many of the book's sections are too cursory and lack all-important context, so they only make sense to readers already familiar with the field. Typical of this problem is the discussion of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox: the authors rigorously develop EPR in logical and philosophical termsAa novel tackAbut the absence of any example of the paradox at work leaves the reader grappling for better understanding. Klein and Lachi?ze-Rey do help illuminate the way ideas in physics evolve, but their hit-or-miss execution makes their argument at once unwieldy and incomplete. This small volume is really an extended essay, awkward in its execution despite the provocative ideas on which it touches.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019512085X
• ISBN 13: 9780195120851
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176