Author : John C. Taylor
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 506 pages
File Size : 41,26 MB
Release : 2001-04-09
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 9780521659383
A wide-ranging and illuminating account of how our understanding of the world has developed by uncovering 'hidden unities' in nature.
Author : John C. Taylor
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 506 pages
File Size : 35,69 MB
Release : 2001-04-16
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780521650649
One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying laws, or principles. In Hidden Unity, eminent physicist John Taylor puts many of these findings into historical perspective and documents how progress is made when unexpected, hidden unities are uncovered between apparently unrelated physical phenomena. Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, such as the unity of celestial and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century). Without relying on mathematical detail, Taylor's emphasis is on fundamental physics, like particle physics and cosmology. Balancing what is understood with the unestablished theories and still unanswered questions, Taylor takes readers on a fascinating ongoing journey. John C. Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. A student of Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, Taylor's research career has spanned the era of developments in elementary particle physics since the 1950s. He taught theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and he has lectured worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
Author : Liz Swan
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 820 pages
File Size : 44,42 MB
Release : 2012-08-27
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9400741561
Origin(s) of Design in Nature is a collection of over 40 articles from prominent researchers in the life, physical, and social sciences, medicine, and the philosophy of science that all address the philosophical and scientific question of how design emerged in the natural world. The volume offers a large variety of perspectives on the design debate including progressive accounts from artificial life, embryology, complexity, cosmology, theology and the philosophy of biology. This book is volume 23 of the series, Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology. www.springer.com/series/5775
Author : Ari Ben-Menahem
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 6070 pages
File Size : 24,91 MB
Release : 2009-03-06
Category : Education
ISBN : 3540688315
This 5,800-page encyclopedia surveys 100 generations of great thinkers, offering more than 2,000 detailed biographies of scientists, engineers, explorers and inventors who left their mark on the history of science and technology. This six-volume masterwork also includes 380 articles summarizing the time-line of ideas in the leading fields of science, technology, mathematics and philosophy.
Author : Spencer Scoular
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 34,30 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Science
ISBN : 1490548343
Albert Einstein once wrote: "The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction." Remarkably, in this book we arrive at those universal axioms from which universal science can be built up by pure deduction. Within the prevailing paradigm of science - the mathematical philosophy of nature - we show it is not possible to unify science. To overcome this limitation we introduce a new, more general paradigm. Since the new paradigm is a generalisation of the mathematical philosophy of nature, we are able to retain the mathematical knowledge built up within the prevailing paradigm. Within the new paradigm we introduce four empirical universal axioms, from which we deduce that it is not possible to mathematically unify the two fundamental theories of physics - quantum theory and general relativity. Instead, from the universal axioms we logically deduce the first symmetry of nature, the first invariance of nature, the universal arrow of time, the universal laws of nature, and the three universal dynamic theories of nature - quantum theory, general relativity and universal evolution. The first symmetry of nature and first invariance of nature arise from the constancy of the universal laws of nature not only being a symmetry, but a unifying symmetry. The biological view of universal evolution provides a new theory of biological evolution that replaces what we show is the deficient neo-Darwinian synthesis. In a similar way, theories of evolution in all the sciences are based on their respective views of universal evolution. From the universal axioms, we deduce the universal features of nature thereby unifying physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, economics and all of science. This book is written for scientifically-inclined general readers, teachers, students, scientists, philosophers, physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, sociologists, and economists.
Author : Michael Frayn
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 31,65 MB
Release : 2008-01-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1466829419
What do we really know? What are we in relation to the world around us? Here, the acclaimed playwright and novelist takes on the great questions of his career—and of our lives Humankind, scientists agree, is an insignificant speck in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would there be numbers if there were no one to count them? Would the universe even be vast, without the fact of our smallness to give it scale? With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work of philosophy sets out to make sense of our place in the scheme of things. Our contact with the world around us, Michael Frayn shows, is always fleeting and indeterminate, yet we have nevertheless had to fashion a comprehensible universe in which action is possible. But how do we distinguish our subjective experience from what is objectively true and knowable? Surveying the spectrum of philosophical concerns from the existence of space and time to relativity and language, Frayn attempts to resolve what he calls "the oldest mystery": the world is what we make of it. In which case, though, what are we? All of Frayn's novels and plays have grappled with these essential questions; in this book he confronts them head-on.
Author : Jürgen Lawrenz
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 46,85 MB
Release : 2013-07-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 1443850896
In this book, modern scientists and philosophers of science confront the prophetic legacy of the 17th century philosopher Leibniz—a metaphysical agenda full of ideas presaging today’s state of the art research into relativity and quantum cosmology; the physics of force, mass, momentum, time and space; complexity and chaos theories; fundamental particles and multiple worlds; and of the electronic cosmos of our computer era. Their immense relevance to us is demonstrated by the engagement with them of over 200 present-day scientific minds. In essence this monograph comprises a survey and critical comparison of interlocking texts, and will serve philosophers as a gateway into fundamental science from the angle of metaphysics, as well as scientists as a documentation of Leibniz’s profound philosophical impact on their own fields.
Author : Richard F. Hassing
Publisher : CUA Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 26,78 MB
Release : 2018-03-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 081323056X
Teleology - the inquiry into the goals or goods at which nature, history, God, and human beings aim - is among the most fundamental yet controversial themes in the history of philosophy. Are there ends in nonhuman nature? Does human history have a goal? Do humanly unintended events of great significance express some sort of purpose? Do human beings have ends prior to choice? The essays in this volume address the abiding questions of final causality. The chapters are arranged in historical order from Aristotle through Hegel to contemporary anthropic-principle cosmology.
Author : Immanuel Kant
Publisher : Hackett Publishing
Page : 1106 pages
File Size : 36,60 MB
Release : 1996-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780872202573
Reflects the elegant achievement of Kant. This title provides a roadmap to Kant's abstract and complex argumentation by locating his view in the context of eighteenth-century, and attempts to understand the nature of the thinking mind and its ability to comprehend the physical universe.
Author : Michael Laitman
Publisher : Laitman Kabbalah Publishers
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 32,91 MB
Release : 2019-12-22
Category : History
ISBN : 1671872207
The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism is like no other book you have ever read about Jews, about history, or about anti-Semitism. As its title suggests, it draws a direct link between Jewish unity and a rise in anti-Semitism, including the current wave. Assuming such a correlation is so extraordinary, you could easily brush it off as a provocation were it not documented in hundreds of books, essays, and letters throughout history. Beginning in ancient Babylon and ending in America, Babylon’s modern counterpart, the author masterfully draws parallels and connects the dots of history like none have done before. By the end of the book, you will know the reason for the oldest hatred, how it can be dissolved, and how Jews and non-Jews alike will benefit as a result.
