Anonymous
Posted December 23, 2006
Professor Stenger's book draws a map for the non-scientist through the otherwise intimidating terrain of physics. His survey bypasses the winding streets and cul-de-sacs that bewilder strangers, thus emphasizing the major avenues and boulevards that carry visitors from Democritus past Galilei, Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, and other physics landmarks. These luminaries light Professor Stenger's path from the nothing that preceded everything to the universes on each side of the first moment. 'Nothing' includes neither matter nor energy. He walks us from that nothing void to the everything that includes us, everything from the tiniest strange quark to the greatest discernable distance. He does this by introducing the idea of point of view invariance, the idea that the laws of physics should apply in all reference frames. That simplest of keys opens the way for comprehending the cosmos, even for us who once knew but no longer remember much of calculus and trigonometry. He writes simply and clearly, without requiring the reader to re-read sentences over and over to glean an arcane point. Finally, for those who want meatier explanations in the language of mathematics, he includes several addenda in which he derives with undergraduate mathematics the points he makes earlier in simpler English.
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More About This Textbook
Overview
For those fascinated by how physics explains the universe and affects philosophy, this in-depth presentation of the cosmos, complete with an appendix of mathematical formulas, makes accessible to lay readers findings normally available only to professional scientists. In a series of remarkable developments in the 20th century and continuing into the 21st, elementary particle physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists have removed much of the mystery that surrounds our understanding of the physical universe. We now have mathematical models that are consistent with all observational data, including measurements of incredible precision, and we have a good understanding of why those models take the form they do. But the question arises: Where do the "laws" revealed by the mathematical models come from? Some conjecture that they represent a set of restraints on the behavior of matter that are built into the structure of the universe, either by God or some other ubiquitous governing principle. In this challenging, stimulating discussion of physics and its implications, the author disputes this notion. Instead, he argues that physical laws are simply restrictions on the ways physicists may draw the models they use to represent the behavior of matter if they wish to do so objectively. Since mathematical descriptions of data must be independent of any specific point of view, that is, they must possess "point-of-view invariance" (maximum objectivity), they naturally conform to certain fundamental laws that insure that objectivity, such as the great conservation principles of energy and momentum. The laws of physics, however, are not simply an arbitrary set of rules since the observed data beautifully demonstrate their accuracy.
Editorial Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Stenger (Has Science Found God?), emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii, goes to great lengths to explain that, although he is not completely convinced that the laws of physics as we know them have objective reality, he doesn't subscribe to the postmodernist notion that there is no such thing as objective reality. Stenger explains that the power of currently accepted models of physics arises from what he calls "point-of-view invariance," i.e., they have the ability to make the same predictions regardless of where or when an observer is taking measurements. While this point is well made and important, Stenger's descriptions of the models of physics and his discussion of cosmology will be largely incomprehensible to the average reader. A third of the book consists of eight mathematical supplements designed for "anyone who has taken the major courses in a four-year curriculum of undergraduate physics, chemistry, engineering, or mathematics." B&w illus. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Product Details
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