The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics

Etienne Klein

ISBN 10: 019512085X / ISBN 13: 9780195120851

Published by Oxford University Press Inc, 1999

About this Item

Quantum physicist Etienne Klein and astrophysicist Marc Lachieze-Rey present and comment on the successive unifications that have marked the fundamental advances in physics. A good deal of modern theoretical physics is lightly and gracefully explained, rooted in a philosophical examination of the motivations that drive physicists and physics. The book is a discourse on the nature of elegance and beauty in physics, seeking to explain how and why beauty is a reliable guide in the ongoing search for Truth in physics.

Seller Inventory # CIN019512085XG

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019512085X
• ISBN 13: 9780195120851
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Good

About this title

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 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.