The Life of the CosmosCosmologist Lee Smolin offers a startling new theory of the universe that is at once elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before. In The Life of the Cosmos, Smolin cuts the Gordian knot of cosmology with a simple, powerful idea: "The underlying structure of our world," he writes, "is to be found in the logic of evolution." Today's physicists have overturned Newton's view of the universe, yet they continue to cling to an understanding of reality not unlike Newton's own - as a clock, an intricate mechanism, governed by laws which are mathematical and eternally true. Smolin argues that the laws of nature we observe may be in part the result of a process of natural selection which took place before the big bang. Smolin's ideas are based on recent developments in cosmology, quantum theory, relativity and string theory, yet they offer, at the same time, an unprecedented view of how these developments may fit together to form a new theory of cosmology. From this perspective, the lines between the simple and the complex, the fundamental and the emergent, and even between the biological and the physical are redrawn. The result is a framework that illuminates many intractable problems, from the paradoxes of quantum theory and the nature of space and time to the problem of constructing a final theory of physics. As he argues for this new view, Smolin introduces the reader to recent developments in a wide range of fields, from string theory and quantum gravity to evolutionary theory the structure of galaxies. He examines the philosophical roots of controversies in the foundations of physics, and shows how they may be transformed as science moves toward understanding the universe as an interrelated, self-constructed entity, within which life and complexity have a natural place, and in which "the occurrence of novelty, indeed the perpetual birth of novelty, can be understood." |
What people are saying - Write a review
User ratings
| 5 stars |
| ||
| 4 stars |
| ||
| 3 stars |
| ||
| 2 stars |
| ||
| 1 star |
|
Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified
LibraryThing Review
User Review - Ma_Washigeri - LibraryThingAs usual I didn't manage to follow all of it - and as usual it didn't matter to my satisfaction with the book. I learned a lot here and there and although I'm not a convert yet, I love the ideas of ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - Ma_Washigeri - LibraryThingAs usual I didn't manage to follow all of it - and as usual it didn't matter to my satisfaction with the book. I learned a lot here and there and although I'm not a convert yet, I love the ideas of ... Read full review
Contents
Beyond the Anthropic Principle | 202 |
Einsteins Legacy | 211 |
The Road from Newton to Einstein | 222 |
The Meaning of Einsteins | 233 |
The Meaning of the Quantum | 240 |
Einsteins Revenge | 255 |
A Pluralistic Universe | 267 |
The World as a Network of Relations | 276 |
Detective Work | 107 |
The Ecology of the Galaxy | 116 |
Games and Galaxies | 129 |
The Organization of | 139 |
The Cosmology of an Interesting Universe | 161 |
The Flower and the Dodecahedron | 177 |
Philosophy Religion and Cosmology | 192 |
The Evolution of Time | 285 |
Testing Cosmological | 301 |
Notes and Acknowledgments | 324 |
Selected Bibliography | 337 |
Index | 347 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
able actually answer argument atoms basic become begin believe black holes called century certainly chapter clouds complete construct contain cosmological created describe developed discussed effects electron elementary particles energy exactly example existence explain fact field forces formation fundamental galaxies give given going gravity happens idea imagine important interactions interesting kind laws lead least light living logic look mass mathematics matter means measure mechanics motion moving natural selection necessary Newton objective observer organization parameters perhaps philosophical physicists physics picture possible predictions present principle problem processes produce properties proposal quantum mechanics quantum theory question reason regions relational relativity requires result scale seems self-organization sense simple space species standard stars string theory structure tell things tion true turn understand universe values whole
Popular passages
Page 215 - Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies...
Page 215 - As for me, I have more than once stated that I held space to be something purely relative, like time; space being an order of co-existences as time is an order of successions. For space denotes in terms of possibility an order of things which exist at the same time, in so far as they exist together, and is not concerned with their particular ways of existing: and when we see several things...
Page 299 - The eternal return, the eternal heat death, are no longer threats, they will never come, nor will heaven. The world will always be here, and it will always be different, more varied, more interesting, more alive, but still always the world in all its complexity and incompleteness. There is nothing behind it, no absolute or platonic world to transcend to. All there is of Nature is what is around us. All there is of Being is relations among real, sensible things. All we have of natural law is a world...
Page 105 - The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is, in principle, capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. Even if the evidence did not favor it, it would still be the best theory available.
Page 338 - Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: New Left Books, 1975).
Page 142 - Then, after the interval needed for its recovery, it gained relief at last from its clamours and confusion, and attaining quiet after great upheaval it returned to its ordered course and continued in it, having control and government of itself and of all within it and remembering, so far as it was able, the instruction it had received from God, its maker and its father.
Page 299 - Thus the metaphor of the universe we are trying now to imagine, which I would like to set against the picture of the universe as a clock, is an image of the universe as a city, as an endless negotiation, an endless construction of the new out of the old. No one made the city; there is no city-maker, as there is a clock-maker. If a city can make itself, without a maker, why can the same not be true of the universe?
Page 217 - He cannot possibly have had a reason why He did it thus rather than otherwise, we should reply that his inference would be true if time were something apart from temporal things, for it would be impossible that there should be reasons why things should have been applied to certain instants rather than to others, when their succession remained the same. But this itself proves that instants apart from things are nothing...
Page 143 - Divine Pilot, it produces much good and but little evil in the creatures it raises and sustains. When it must travel on without God, things go well enough in the years immediately after He abandons control, but as time goes on and forgetfulness of God arises in it, the ancient condition of chaos also begins to assert its sway.
Page 29 - It is reassuring to find that the only logical answer to this question is the same as the answer to the other question: it is obviously a matter of timing — that is, of dramatic design.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Life of the Cosmos Oxford paperbacks |
| Author | Lee Smolin |
| Edition | reprint, revised |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 1998 |
| ISBN | 0195126645, 9780195126648 |
| Length | 358 pages |
| Subjects | › › Science / General Science / Space Science / Cosmology |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |