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We live in the age of a new scientific revolution, one as sweeping
and profound as that launched by Copernicus, one that continues to unfold. Beginning
at the turn of the century, with the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics,
this second revolution has collapsed the old Newtonian universe. Yet the revolution
continues as physicists search for a theory that will unify the quantum with Einstein's
theory of space and time. Now cosmologist 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 and 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." Lee
Smolin writes with an expertise and force of argument that will command attention
throughout the world of science. Perhaps, most important, however, is the humanity
and sharp clarity of his prose, offering access for the layperson to the mind-bending
space at the forefront of today's physics. Lee
Smolin is Professor of Physics at the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry
at the Pennsylvania State University. His Ph.D. is from Harvard University, after
which he did post-doctoral work at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, and
the University of Chicago. His main scientific contributions have been to the
search for a unification of quantum theory, cosmology, and relativity. He lives
in State College, Pennsylvania, and New York City. |
