Our Mathematical Universe

Author: Max Tegmark
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744256
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist. Fascinating from first to last—this is a book that has already prompted the attention and admiration of some of the most prominent scientists and mathematicians.

The Mathematical Universe

Author: Joel L. Schiff
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030506495
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
I first had a quick look, then I started reading it. I couldn't stop. -Gerard 't Hooft (Nobel Prize, in Physics 1999) This is a book about the mathematical nature of our Universe. Armed with no more than basic high school mathematics, Dr. Joel L. Schiff takes you on a foray through some of the most intriguing aspects of the world around us. Along the way, you will visit the bizarre world of subatomic particles, honey bees and ants, galaxies, black holes, infinity, and more. Included are such goodies as measuring the speed of light with your microwave oven, determining the size of the Earth with a stick in the ground and the age of the Solar System from meteorites, understanding how the Theory of Relativity makes your everyday GPS system possible, and so much more. These topics are easily accessible to anyone who has ever brushed up against the Pythagorean Theorem and the symbol π, with the lightest dusting of algebra. Through this book, science-curious readers will come to appreciate the patterns, seeming contradictions, and extraordinary mathematical beauty of our Universe.

The Mathematical Universe

Author: William Dunham
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471536563
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
"Dunham writes for nonspecialists, and they will enjoy his piquantanecdotes and amusing asides -- Booklist "Artfully, Dunham conducts a tour of the mathematical universe. . .he believes these ideas to be accessible to the audience he wantsto reach, and he writes so that they are." -- Nature "If you want to encourage anyone's interest in math, get them TheMathematical Universe." * New Scientist

Reasoning with the Infinite

Author: Michel Blay
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226058351
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
Until the Scientific Revolution, the nature and motions of heavenly objects were mysterious and unpredictable. The Scientific Revolution was revolutionary in part because it saw the advent of many mathematical tools—chief among them the calculus—that natural philosophers could use to explain and predict these cosmic motions. Michel Blay traces the origins of this mathematization of the world, from Galileo to Newton and Laplace, and considers the profound philosophical consequences of submitting the infinite to rational analysis. "One of Michael Blay's many fine achievements in Reasoning with the Infinite is to make us realize how velocity, and later instantaneous velocity, came to play a vital part in the development of a rigorous mathematical science of motion."—Margaret Wertheim, New Scientist

How Not to Be Wrong

Author: Jordan Ellenberg
Publisher: Penguin Press
ISBN: 1594205221
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
A brilliant tour of mathematical thought and a guide to becoming a better thinker, How Not to Be Wrong shows that math is not just a long list of rules to be learned and carried out by rote. Math touches everything we do; It's what makes the world make sense. Using the mathematician's methods and hard-won insights-minus the jargon-professor and popular columnist Jordan Ellenberg guides general readers through his ideas with rigor and lively irreverence, infusing everything from election results to baseball to the existence of God and the psychology of slime molds with a heightened sense of clarity and wonder. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see the hidden structures beneath the messy and chaotic surface of our daily lives. How Not to Be Wrong shows us how--Publisher's description.

Poetry of the Universe

Author: Robert Osserman
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307790584
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
In the bestselling literary tradition of Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell and James Watson's The Double Helix, Poetry of the Universe is a delightful and compelling narrative charting the evolution of mathematical ideas that have helped to illuminate the nature of the observable universe. In a richly anecdotal fashion, the book explores teh leaps of imagination and vision in mathematics that have helped pioneer our understanding of the world around us.

A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe

Author: Michael S. Schneider
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062043161
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 523

Book Description
Discover how mathematical sequences abound in our natural world in this definitive exploration of the geography of the cosmos You need not be a philosopher or a botanist, and certainly not a mathematician, to enjoy the bounty of the world around us. But is there some sort of order, a pattern, to the things that we see in the sky, on the ground, at the beach? In A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Michael Schneider, an education writer and computer consultant, combines science, philosophy, art, and common sense to reaffirm what the ancients observed: that a consistent language of geometric design underpins every level of the universe, from atoms to galaxies, cucumbers to cathedrals. Schneider also discusses numerical and geometric symbolism through the ages, and concepts such as periodic renewal and resonance. This book is an education in the world and everything we can't see within it. Contains numerous b&w photos and illustrations.

The Invisible History of the Human Race

Author: Christine Kenneally
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458798704
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 477

Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2014 We are doomed to repeat history if we fail to learn from it, but how are we affected by the forces that are invisible to us? What role does Neanderthal DNA play in our genetic makeup? How did the theory of eugenics embraced by Nazi Germany first develop? How is trust passed down in Africa, and silence inherited in Tasmania? How are private companies like Ancestry.com uncovering, preserving and potentially editing the past? In The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally reveals that, remarkably, it is not only our biological history that is coded in our DNA, but also our social history. She breaks down myths of determinism and draws on cutting - edge research to explore how both historical artefacts and our DNA tell us where we have come from and where we may be going.

After Physics

Author: David Z Albert
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674731263
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Here the philosopher and physicist David Z Albert argues, among other things, that the difference between past and future can be understood as a mechanical phenomenon of nature and that quantum mechanics makes it impossible to present the entirety of what can be said about the world as a narrative of “befores” and “afters.”

The Universe Speaks in Numbers

Author: Graham Farmelo
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673921
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
How math helps us solve the universe's deepest mysteriesOne of the great insights of science is that the universe has an underlying order. The supreme goal of physicists is to understand this order through laws that describe the behavior of the most basic particles and the forces between them. For centuries, we have searched for these laws by studying the results of experiments. Since the 1970s, however, experiments at the world's most powerful atom-smashers have offered few new clues. So some of the world's leading physicists have looked to a different source of insight: modern mathematics. These physicists are sometimes accused of doing 'fairy-tale physics', unrelated to the real world. But in The Universe Speaks in Numbers, award-winning science writer and biographer Farmelo argues that the physics they are doing is based squarely on the well-established principles of quantum theory and relativity, and part of a tradition dating back to Isaac Newton. With unprecedented access to some of the world's greatest scientific minds, Farmelo offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of the blossoming relationship between mathematics and physics and the research that could revolutionize our understanding of reality.A masterful account of the some of the most groundbreaking ideas in physics in the past four decades. The Universe Speaks in Numbers is essential reading for anyone interested in the quest to discover the fundamental laws of nature.