The Pursuit of Destiny by Paul Halpern
A fascinating journey from the oracles of the past to the predictive machines of the future. . In The Pursuit of Destiny , physicist Paul Halpern brings a scientist's eye to questions of time and fate, tracing the history of forecasting from its roots in ancient mysticism to its development as a modern science. As Halpern explains, the desire to foretell the future is an integral part of what makes us human. Newtonian mechanics offered the tantalizing possibility of describing nature as a clockwork mechanism, but twentieth-century scientific discoveries, such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Einstein's flexible concepts of past, present, and future, undermined this rigid notion. Scientists today grapple with formidable barriers to knowledge, hoping to extend prediction's frontiers. Drawing on modern theories of complexity, chaos theory, quantum theory, and relativity, Halpern explores the latest methods of scientific, social, and technological forecasting. How much of the future is inevitable? When are predictions most likely to succeed? Does time even exist? An intriguing look at the potential limits to our ability to forecast, The Pursuit of Destiny is an eloquent testament to our very human need to try.| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780738200958 |
| ISBN 10 | 0738200956 |
| Title | The Pursuit of Destiny |
| Author | Paul Halpern |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | INGRAM PUBLISHER SERVICES US |
| Year published | 2000-10-25 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |