To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science - Hardcover

Weinberg, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241196620 ISBN 13: 9780241196625

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2015

Synopsis

In To Explain the World, pre-eminent theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg offers a rich and irreverent history of science from a unique perspective - that of a scientist. Moving from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad to Oxford, and from the Museum of Alexandria to the Royal Society of London, he shows that the scientists of the past not only did not understand what we understand about the world - they did not understand what there is to understand. Yet eventually, through the struggle to solve such mysteries as the backward movement of the planets and the rise and fall of tides, the modern discipline of science emerged.

About this title

Review:

I read To Explain the World completely enthralled. It transmutes the base metal of a mere history of science into pure gold-into a magisterial celebration of a long and heroic struggle, still incomplete, to understand nature. Only a committed scientist of Steven Weinberg's brilliance, experience and breadth of insight could have accomplished this. I ended the book exhilarated (Ian McEwan)

In Steven Weinberg's To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science and Frank Wilczek's A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design, two Nobel physicists give two astonishingly different accounts of the history of science, from antiquity to their own discoveries. Weinberg takes an unapologetically hard-headed stance, where philosophy, beauty and so forth are denounced as misleading. Wilczek sketches a dreamy vision, where beauty and harmony are essential ingredients of the quest for knowledge. Who is right? Both: this is the magic of science, which coherently combines wildly diverse skills. Weinberg is a father of electroweak theory, Wilczek of strong interaction. Still unsolved is gravity: what are the skills we need to solve it? We do not know yet (Carlo Rovelli, Financial Times 'Books of the Year')

This is a great book, a necessary book for our time.... As today's pre-eminent theoretical physicist, with a lifetime's experience behind him, Weinberg's unique perspective is evident throughout the text (Independent)

In this masterful, entertainingly 'irreverent' book, Weinberg explains the rise of science from ancient Greeks to modern geeks in terms that his students and the rest of us will understand (Iain Finlayson The Times)

It would be putting it mildly to say that Weinberg triumphantly lives up to what it says on the Nobel tin: a true intellectual as well as a brilliant theoretical physicist (Richard Dawkins)

Regarded as the pre-eminent theoretical physicist alive today... Weinberg is also a fine writer and communicator about ideas beyond his own field... Weinberg has clearly carried out extensive scholarly investigation for To Explain the World, and the book works as history. But what makes it tand out is his perspective as a top scientist working today (Clive Cookson Financial Times)

Steven Weinberg, the world's preeminent physicist, provides a masterful journey through humankind's scientific coming of age. This is a story that not only traces our deep insights into nature's workings but reveals how we came to grasp the very meaning of scientific insight. With its refreshing candor and lyrical prose, To Explain the World is a delightful celebration of our passionate drive for understanding (Brian Greene)

Weinberg has reached the pinnacle of scientific success - the Nobel Prize - he writes clearly and with confidence, imbuing the reader with an irresistible sense that one is in the hands of a master physicist at play (Sunday Times)

There have been many accounts of the historical progression of our understanding of the world around us, but few have had the unique selling point of Steven Weinberg's To Explain the World. Weinberg is a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist... In this sense, then, Weinberg's chronicle of the long development of physics leading up to the role he has personally played in it is akin to Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (Lewis Dartnell Telegraph)

An absolute delight (Times Higher Education)

From the Back Cover:

"Refreshing and well-written . . . tells a rich, meaningful tale about the emergence of science."--New York Times Book Review

"A masterful journey through humankind's scientific coming-of-age . . . a delightful celebration of our passionate drive for understanding."--Brian Greene

In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries, from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato's Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral school of Chartres and the Royal Society of London. He shows that the scientists of ancient and medieval times not only did not understand what we now know about the world but also did not understand what there is to understand, nor how to understand it.

Yet over the centuries, through the struggle to solve such mysteries as the curious backward movement of the planets or the rise and fall of the tides, the modern discipline of science eventually emerged. Along the way, Weinberg examines historic clashes and collaborations between science and the competing spheres of religion, technology, poetry, mathematics, and philosophy.

To Explain the World is an illuminating exploration of how we have come to consider and analyze the world around us.

"A thoughtful history."--The New Yorker

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0241196620
• ISBN 13: 9780241196625
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432