The Quest for Unity: The Adventure of Physics

ISBN-13: 9780195120851 / Angielski / Twarda / 1999 / 176 str.

Etienne Klein; Marc Lachieze-Rey; Marc Lachieze-Rey

Opis

In The Search for Unity the authors reveal how the quest for the One h as driven all the great breakthroughs in science. They show how the Gr eeks searched for the fundamental element in all things; how Galileo u nified the earth with the heavens, by discovering valleys and mountain s on the moon; and how Newton created a single theory to describe the motion of the celestial bodies. With unequaled clarity, they explore t he 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 physi cal laws of the universe. Throughout the book, the authors stress the esthetic motives of scientists, how they recognize truth through appre hension of mathematical beauty. And in tracing the quest for unity up to the present day, they illuminate the bizarre workings of quantum me chanics and the sticky definition of reality itself at the subatomic l evel.