Dream Universe by David Lindley
A vivid and captivating narrative about how modern science broke free of ancient philosophy, and how theoretical physics is returning to its unscientific roots. In the early 17th century Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the table for all the breakthroughs that followed--from Kepler to Newton to Einstein. But in the early twentieth century when quantum physics, with its deeply complex mathematics, entered into the picture, something began to change. Many physicists began looking to the equations first and physical reality second. As we investigate realms further and further from what we can see and what we can test, we must look to elegant, aesthetically-pleasing equations to develop our conception of what reality is. As a result, much of theoretical physics today is something more akin to the philosophy of Plato than the science to which the physicists are heirs. In The Dream Universe, Lindley asks what is science when it becomes completely untethered from measurable phenomena?
Lindley, David: - David Lindley is Professor Emeritus at the University of Leeds, where he taught for many years in the School of English. He has previously edited, among other texts, The Tempest for the New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2nd edition, 2013) and 11 court masques by Ben Jonson for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (Cambridge, forthcoming). A study of the scandalous career of Frances Howard appeared in 1993, and he has written extensively on the relationships of music and literature, including a study of Thomas Campion (1985) and Shakespeare and Music (2006).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780385543859 |
| ISBN 10 | 0385543859 |
| Title | Dream Universe |
| Author | David Lindley |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 2020-03-17 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |