Overview

What could quantum mechanics have in common with the philosophical musings of the ancient Greeks? In our age of multimillion-dollar supercolliders, it's hard to imagine that modern physics owes anything to thinkers who predate Descartes. But French physicists Etienne Klein and March Lachieze-Rey see an unbroken thread running from antiquity to the present--an ongoing search, throughout the history of science, for unity. In The Search for Unity the authors reveal how the quest for the One has driven all the great breakthroughs in science. They show how the Greeks searched for the fundamental element in all things; how Galileo unified the earth with the heavens, by discovering valleys and mountains on the moon; and how Newton created a single theory to describe the motion of the celestial bodies. With unequaled clarity, they explore the work of the most famous unifier of all, Albert Einstein, who melded space and time into a combined space-time concept, and then embarked on an unsuccessful search for a single theory to explain all the physical laws of the universe. Throughout the book, the authors stress the esthetic motives of scientists, how they recognize truth through apprehension of mathematical beauty. And in tracing the quest for unity up to the present day, they illuminate the bizarre workings of quantum mechanics and the sticky definition of reality itself at the subatomic level. A grand unification of all interactions still awaits discovery--but as Klein and Lachieze-Rey show, the search itself is as fascinating as the end result may ever be.

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9780195120851

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Reviews

We can only rejoice in this glorious account of mankind's striving over the centuries to unravel the whole grand story of existence, from Plato, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Aristotle through Copernicus , Kepler and Newton to Einstein and Bhr, recounted here with French enlightenment and passion for the telling point. --John Archibald Wheeler, Professor Emeritus of Physics, Princeton University Probably the best way to describe [this book] is to say that it is a popular history of the various attempts to find unified accounts of the physical world, ranging all the way from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the modern search for a 'Theory of Everything'. As such, it is more a book about the philosophy of physics than about physics itself, putting heavy emphasis on the contrast between the human desire for unity and the (apparent?) complex multiplicity of the world in which we live. . . . there's a lot about mathematics and mathematicians here too. In fact, our current dreams of unity are really about a mathematical description of the world in which the bewildering variety of things lies over a fundamental and simple mathematical unity. The authors are quite skeptical of such a view, and their account, at times fascinating and at times pretentious, will get people thinking. --The Mathematical Association of America The Quest for Unity is a refreshing look at [the] tension between unity and diversity in physics, and places it in a useful historical perspective. The book touches on many issues of interest in the philosophy of science, for example the relation between the eternally valid laws of universal application and the passage of time in changing physical systems possessing a unique identity; also, the way in which the abstract mathematical reasoning that underlies physics can form a foundation for venturing beyond the tested facts to new ways of understanding nature, which seems to be patterned ina mathematical way at a fundamental level. --Nature This book surveys a number of issues in physics, the history of physics and the philosophy of science for the reader without a sophisticated background in any of these fields. The material is organized around the overall theme of science as engaged in a pursuit of a unified understanding of the nature of the world. Chapter 1 surveys a number of attempts among the ancient Greek philosophers to discover unity in the diversity of nature . . . Chapter 2 takes up early modern physics . . . Chapter 3 surveys some of the history of physics . . . Chapter 4 discusses quantum mechanics . . . Chapter 5 discusses how science . . . tends to subdivide into distinct disciplinary sub-specialties . . . Finally, in Chapter 6, the dream of unification is discussed as a scientific ideal. . . . It is . . . suggested that one ought to find the true unity in science, more, perhaps, in a unity of method than in some ultimate ontological unity. --Mathematical Reviews

At one level, this is a fairly run-of-the-mill account of the historical development of science, from the ancient Greeks to the present search for a grand unified theory. The two particularly appealing things about this version of the story are its brevity (assuming you already know a little physics, it puts a lot of things in a historical context) and the fact that it comes from a non-Anglo Saxon culture (the authors work for the French Atomic Energy Commission). The snag about this is that the inevitable delays associated with translation mean that it is already out of date, and makes no mention of the latest big idea - membranes. But on the plus side, the translation is first class, and Axel Reisinger has produced a very easily read English text, in spite of the intrusion of a few equations. Nothing profound, but a pleasing light read. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Etienne Klein and Marc Lachieze-Rey are both scientists with the Atomic Energy Commission in Sacey, France. Axel Reisinger is a scientist at Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company, in Nashua, New Hampshire.

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