A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design - Hardcover

Wilczek, Frank

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846147018 ISBN 13: 9781846147012

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2015

Synopsis

In this 'long meditation on a single question', Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wilczek considers how ideas about beauty and art have always been intertwined with our scientific understanding of the cosmos. Taking as his starting-point Pythagoras' credo that 'all things are number', he follows the quest of figures such as Newton and Einstein who contributed to our present-day understanding of the equations and symmetries that reveal the fundamental purity, order and harmony of the entire universe.

About this title

Review

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')

Shocking and invigorating (Nicholas Blincoe, 'Books of the Year' Telegraph)

It's rare that scientists as brilliant as Wilczek give us a glimpse of what goes on inside their heads. Anyone taking up this opportunity should expect to come away pretty dazzled (BBC Focus)

Frank Wilczek's A Beautiful Question is the first book I've read in which I've felt that almost vertiginous sensation of peering through layers of theories down to the true nature of the universe ... At times this is a challenging text, but it is well worth the effort. Wilczek is admirably clear in his explanations. (Lewis Dartnell Telegraph)

One of the pleasures of reading a book like this is to be in the company of a top-drawer thinker who has strained every sinew to find new ways of describing the patterns in nature's underlying fabric ... A fresh perspective on modern scientific thinking from an expert with a flair for jargon-free exposition ... Wilczek writes with bracing pizzazz ... This handsomely produced book contains more beef than many a finely written scientific potboiler (Graham Farmelo Guardian)

Wilczek's sheer pleasure in the beauty of mathematics is the engine and joy of this book ... [A] rewarding read ... There is a lot of food for the mind here, but also some for the eye. (Andrea Wulf Financial Times)

[A] searching and earnest book ... All 448 pages are buoyed by a singular, fervent enthusiasm. This is the book of a love-struck physicist (Amy X. Wang Slate)

For a century, science has invalidated 'soft' questions about truth, beauty, and transcendence. It took considerable courage therefore for Frank Wilczek to declare that such questions are within the framework of 'hard' science. Anyone who wants to see how science and transcendence can be compatible must read this book. Wilczek has caught the winds of change, and his thinking breaks through some sacred boundaries with curiosity, insight, and intellectual power. (Deepak Chopra, M.D.)

A Beautiful Question is both a brilliant exploration of largely uncharted territories and a refreshingly idiosyncratic guide to developments in particle physics. (Nature)

[An] eccentrically brilliant book ... A potent antidote to those many whiggish histories of science that castigate previous generations for their error. (Steven Poole Spectator)

About the Author

Born in New York, Frank Wilczek studied at the University of Chicago and gained his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University. Frank won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for work he did as a twenty-one-year-old graduate student. His writing has featured twice in Best American Science Writing and his exposition of modern physics, Longing for the Harmonies was named New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Frank is currently Herman Feshbach Professorship of Physics at MIT. He lives in Massachusetts, with his wife, Betsy Devine.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1846147018
• ISBN 13: 9781846147012
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448