Product Description

In this volume, Steven Weinberg pursues his principal passions, theoretical physics and a deeper understanding of the culture, philosophy, history, and politics of science. Each of these essays, which span 15 years, struggles in one way or another with the necessity of facing up to the discovery that the laws of nature are impersonal, with no hint of a special status for human beings. Defending the spirit of science against its cultural adversaries, these essays express a viewpoint that is reductionist, realist, and devoutly secular. Each is preceded by a new introduction that explains its provenance and, if necessary, brings it up to date.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #774792 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 306 pages

Review
Winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979, Weinberg will be well known to science buffs for his book "The First Three Minutes" and to a wider readership for his frequent essays in the "New York Review of Books," He is one of the foremost proponents of reductionism, 'the explanation of a wide range of scientific principles in terms of simpler, more universal ones.' He has also been a major figure in the so-called science wars, arguing against writers like Derrida and Latour who question the objective character of scientific knowledge and maintain that cultural factors influence the nature of scientific discoveries...Yet he is quite adept at explaining complex concepts clearly to the general public.

About the Author
Steven Weinberg, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas, is the author of many books, including The Quantum Theory of Fields, and, for general readers, The First Three Minutes and Dreams of a Final Theory. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 and The National Medal of Science in 1991.