Does God Play Dice

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631232513
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
The revised and updated edition includes three completely new chapters on the prediction and control of chaotic systems. It also incorporates new information regarding the solar system and an account of complexity theory. This witty, lucid and engaging book makes the complex mathematics of chaos accessible and entertaining. Presents complex mathematics in an accessible style. Includes three new chapters on prediction in chaotic systems, control of chaotic systems, and on the concept of chaos. Provides a discussion of complexity theory.

Do Dice Play God?

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 178283401X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
Uncertainty is everywhere. It lurks in every consideration of the future - the weather, the economy, the sex of an unborn child - even quantities we think that we know such as populations or the transit of the planets contain the possibility of error. It's no wonder that, throughout that history, we have attempted to produce rigidly defined areas of uncertainty - we prefer the surprise party to the surprise asteroid. We began our quest to make certain an uncertain world by reading omens in livers, tea leaves, and the stars. However, over the centuries, driven by curiosity, competition, and a desire be better gamblers, pioneering mathematicians and scientists began to reduce wild uncertainties to tame distributions of probability and statistical inferences. But, even as unknown unknowns became known unknowns, our pessimism made us believe that some problems were unsolvable and our intuition misled us. Worse, as we realized how omnipresent and varied uncertainty is, we encountered chaos, quantum mechanics, and the limitations of our predictive power. Bestselling author Professor Ian Stewart explores the history and mathematics of uncertainty. Touching on gambling, probability, statistics, financial and weather forecasts, censuses, medical studies, chaos, quantum physics, and climate, he makes one thing clear: a reasonable probability is the only certainty.

God Does Not Play Dice

Author: David A. Shiang
Publisher: eBookIt.com
ISBN: 0980237343
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 117

Book Description
In this revolutionary and provocative work, David A. Shiang claims to offer final answers to many of humankind's most enduring mysteries. He argues that Einstein was right in rejecting the randomness of quantum theory, and he shows that Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) and Brian Greene (The Fabric of the Cosmos) are mistaken in saying that evidence shows nature to be probabilistic. He takes on Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), contending that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is neither scientific nor correct. He also maintains that worry and regret can be overcome, following in the footsteps of T.S. Eliot and other pioneers of the mind. Odds are high that the logical and elegant solutions Shiang presents to our deepest riddles will cause you to rethink your most fundamental beliefs. "Very provocative, erudite, and solidly based on intelligent and logical thinking! Congratulations on making an excellent contribution to understanding the role of a higher intelligence in organizing the affairs of the universe!" - Pat McGovern, IDG Founder and Chairman, Co-founder of The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT "His lucidity and logic are breathtakingly devastating. He is not afraid to defend the mind of God, either.... I cannot overstate the importance of Shiang's work and its deep influence." - Len Klikunas, Cultural Anthropologist

The Quantum Adventure

Author: Alex Montwill
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1848166478
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
This title deals with the birth and growth of quantum mechanics. It explains the 'classical dilemma' which faced physics at the start of the 20th century and goes on to show how quantum mechanics emerged and flourished.

God Does Play Dice with the Universe

Author: Shan Gao
Publisher: Theschoolbook.com
ISBN: 9781845492663
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Science has made a mighty advance since it originated in ancient Greece more than 2500 years ago. Yet we still live in Plato's cave today; we think everything around us moves continuously, but continuous motion is merely a shadow of real motion. This book will lead you to walk out the cave along a logical and comprehensible road. After passing Zeno's arrow, Newton's inertia, Einstein's light, and Schrödinger's cat, you will reach the real world, where every thing in the universe, whether it is an atom or a ball or even a star, ceaselessly jumps in a random and discontinuous way. In a famous metaphor, God does play dice with the universe. The new discovery may finally solve Zeno's paradoxes and the quantum puzzle, and it will deeply change our view of the world. Its very existence is at any rate, an excellent illustration of the extent to which physical data force us to depart from commonsense ideas when we try to depict reality "as it really is." ---- Bernard d'Espagnat, University of Paris, Orsay The idea of using discontinuous motion as a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics is original. ---- Reviewer of Foundations of Physics I fully agree with your idea of discontinuous movement. ---- Antoine Suarez, Center for Quantum Philosophy, Zurich If it goes through, this would be an original and significant contribution to the debate over the nature of motion. ---- Reviewer of American Philosophical Quarterly A sense of relief at last! Gao has done it, with no metaphysics and magic. He seems to have no life-style to justify and no axe to grind against any belief system. Then pure physics and objectivity prevails. ---- Ph.D. Philip P. Benjamin

Does God Roll Dice?

Author: Joseph Bracken
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814680534
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that "God does not play dice," claiming an orderly and predictable structure to the universe. Today, advances and presumptions in the field of quantum mechanics pose a serious challenge to such a position. It's a challenge not only for nuclear physicists, but also for Christian theologians who work to explain God's providence for the world. In Does God Roll Dice? noted Jesuit scholar Joseph Bracken claims that something like "directed chance" (Teilhard de Chardin) is God's normal mode of operation in a world always perilously poised between order and chaos. Bracken adopts the relatively new concept of self-organizing or self-correcting systems out of the natural and social sciences to deal with controversial issues in the ongoing religion and science debate. At the same time he deliberately keeps the language and context of the book suitable for the intelligent non-professional reader.

Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat

Author: Paul Halpern
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465040659
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
"A fascinating and thought-provoking story, one that sheds light on the origins of . . . the current challenging situation in physics." -- Wall Street Journal When the fuzzy indeterminacy of quantum mechanics overthrew the orderly world of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schröger were at the forefront of the revolution. Neither man was ever satisfied with the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, however, and both rebelled against what they considered the most preposterous aspect of quantum mechanics: its randomness. Einstein famously quipped that God does not play dice with the universe, and Schröger constructed his famous fable of a cat that was neither alive nor dead not to explain quantum mechanics but to highlight the apparent absurdity of a theory gone wrong. But these two giants did more than just criticize: they fought back, seeking a Theory of Everything that would make the universe seem sensible again. In Einstein's Dice and Schröger's Cat, physicist Paul Halpern tells the little-known story of how Einstein and Schröger searched, first as collaborators and then as competitors, for a theory that transcended quantum weirdness. This story of their quest-which ultimately failed-provides readers with new insights into the history of physics and the lives and work of two scientists whose obsessions drove its progress. Today, much of modern physics remains focused on the search for a Theory of Everything. As Halpern explains, the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson makes the Standard Model-the closest thing we have to a unified theory- nearly complete. And while Einstein and Schröger failed in their attempt to explain everything in the cosmos through pure geometry, the development of string theory has, in its own quantum way, brought this idea back into vogue. As in so many things, even when they were wrong, Einstein and Schröger couldn't help but get a great deal right.

Einstein and the Quantum

Author: A. Douglas Stone
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168563
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
The untold story of Albert Einstein's role as the father of quantum theory Einstein and the Quantum reveals for the first time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light—the core of what we now know as quantum theory—than he did about relativity. A compelling blend of physics, biography, and the history of science, Einstein and the Quantum shares the untold story of how Einstein—not Max Planck or Niels Bohr—was the driving force behind early quantum theory. It paints a vivid portrait of the iconic physicist as he grappled with the apparently contradictory nature of the atomic world, in which its invisible constituents defy the categories of classical physics, behaving simultaneously as both particle and wave. And it demonstrates how Einstein's later work on the emission and absorption of light, and on atomic gases, led directly to Erwin Schrödinger's breakthrough to the modern form of quantum mechanics. The book sheds light on why Einstein ultimately renounced his own brilliant work on quantum theory, due to his deep belief in science as something objective and eternal.

Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847651283
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
School maths is not the interesting part. The real fun is elsewhere. Like a magpie, Ian Stewart has collected the most enlightening, entertaining and vexing 'curiosities' of maths over the years... Now, the private collection is displayed in his cabinet. There are some hidden gems of logic, geometry and probability -- like how to extract a cherry from a cocktail glass (harder than you think), a pop up dodecahedron, the real reason why you can't divide anything by zero and some tips for making money by proving the obvious. Scattered among these are keys to unlocking the mysteries of Fermat's last theorem, the Poincaré Conjecture, chaos theory, and the P/NP problem for which a million dollar prize is on offer. There are beguiling secrets about familiar names like Pythagoras or prime numbers, as well as anecdotes about great mathematicians. Pull out the drawers of the Professor's cabinet and who knows what could happen...

God's Dice

Author: David Baddiel
Publisher: Nick Hern Books
ISBN: 9781848429116
Category : Atheists
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Book Description
Science and religion go head to head in David Baddiel's debut play: a ferociously funny battle for power, fame and followers.