Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #304786 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Nature
'Its scope is, appropriately, vast'

Synopsis
The Holy Grail of modern scientists is "The Theory Of Everything", which will contain all that can be know about the Universe - the magic formula that Einstein spent his life searching for and failed to find. In this elegant and exciting book, John Barrow challenges the quest for ultimate explanation.

About the Author
John Barrow:
John D. Barrow is Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of several best-selling books, including Theories of Everything, Impossibility, and The Book of Nothing.

Customer Reviews

Now I've seen everything...
My first academic love was theoretical physics. I was going to be a astrophysicist; when I arrived at university, however, the department told me that I knew too much for the introductory courses, and to come back in a few years to take the advanced courses. Alas, I studied on my own and never returned officially (still an honourable course in astronomy, which has a great love and need of the dedicated amateur), and went professionally in different directions.

However, I should have known even back then what my ultimate directions would be (as John Barrow's book, 'Theories of Everything' has as a subtitle 'The Quest for Ultimate Explanation', I may slip into a lot of 'ultimates' here), for when I picked up the book in the shop and began reading the first page, I knew I had to read it (and read it right away) when I came across the following statement:'Suddenly scientists are asking such questions in all seriousness and theologians find their thinking pre-empted and guided by the mathematical speculations of a new generation of scientists. Ironically, few theologians have an adequate training in physics to keep abreat of the details, and few physicists have a sufficient appreciation of the wider questions to make a fruitful dialogue easy.'

The idea in physics of The Theory of Everything is the quest for that single, all-encompassing, simple set of principles by with all other laws, actions, and outcomes can be explained (and possibly predicted) with unerring logic. Some physicists of late have begun to have confidence that human progress is very close to this.

Perhaps this is a misplaced confidence; one is reminded of the Director of the Prussian Patent Office a century ago who stated that the office might as well close soon, since everything that was going to be invented probably already had been. There was a confidence in Newtonian-based world views that was very strong indeed (a mighty fortress, one might say, to support the altar of physics) -- this was discovered to be a golden calf, which was in turn melted by Einstein et al. It the 'Theory of Everything' another idol? 'Our monotheistic traditions reinforce the assumption that the Universe is at root a unity.'

So much of mathematics, physics, philosophy, and other disciplines have, even if it is unspoken, a sense of unity at heart, in which this belief plays a part. 'Indeed, the concept of a Supreme Being is in all cultures a more primitive and natural notion than that of laws of Nature. It could well be argued that no culture arrived at a robust concept of the latter without a preliminary concept of the former.'

The book quickly becomes more theoretical and scientific in nature; this is not a text for the faint hearted. This is what Barrow meant by theologians (and, by extension, the general public) not being aware or familiar with the details. In discussing symmetries in the universe and the idea of creation ex nihilo, Barrow brings in ideas of overall net roation and electric charge to the universe (where is the evidence for these?), and basic conservation principles, in part to dispute the idea that creation ex nihilo somehow violates a cosmological principle. 'The total mass-energy of all the constituents of a finite Universe appears to be always equal in magnitude but opposite in sign to the total gravitational potential energies of those particles. It could suddenly thus appear spontaneously without violating the conservation of mass-energy.'

This is beyond any systematic theology text I've ever encountered.

The science is sound, and fair in presentation. Barrow presents opposing viewpoints with clarity and critique. Barrow expands into mathematics (of course, incompleteness theorems, that gem of philosophical speculation that is so often misapplied beyond its narrow purview, is here), biological ideas of organising principles (is this natural or a fluke, or did it require an outside intervention?), time and space difficulties and paradoxes, and more.

Of course, there is a caution in the 'Theory of Everything'. This is not, in fact, meant to explain everything. It will not explain human inspiration (i.e., the Homeric epics, Shakespeare's plays, or Mozart's Requiem); it will not explain emotions; ultimately, it will not explain God. 'There is no formula that can deliver all truth, all harmony, all simplicity. No Theory of Everything can ever provide total insight. For, to see through everything, would leave us seeing nothing at all.'