The Quark And The Jaguar / Adventures in the Simple and the Complex

In A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking described our attempts to formulate the physical laws of the universe. In this work, Nobel Laureate, Gell-Mann, argues that this is only the beginning of what we need to know about our world and ourselves. What if we know those laws? What next? Seeking a unified theory of all matter, whether it is the structure of galaxies or the moment of creative thought in the human mind, this book defines the underlying unity in such diverse fields as linguistics, archaeology, economics and politics.

The Nobel Prize-winner's story of finding the connections between the basic laws of physics and the diversity of the natural world links such disparate subjects as chimpanzee behavior, avalanche mechanics, superstring theory, and Gilbert and Sullivan.

"A stimulating, provocative, and uncommon cut across compartments of human knowledge that are usually hermetically sealed. It is always a pleasure to see a first-class mind grappling with the greatest mysteries, and at the same time resolutely resisting mysticism." --Carl Sagan