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The beginning of the twenty-first century
is a watershed in modern science, a time that will forever
change our understanding of the universe -- and The Cosmic
Landscape is the first book to illuminate the new paradigm.
Leonard Susskind is the renowned physicist
who introduced the concept of string theory to the world
of physical science. In doing so, he inspired a generation
of physicists who believed that the theory would uniquely
predict the properties of our universe. Now those string
theorists find themselves stymied. Their results don't describe
an "elegant universe" at all. But what they did
discover is so surprising that it is rapidly changing the
foundations of physics and cosmology.
This book is about one of the greatest scientific
revolutions in history -- as important as the great Darwinian
debates. Physics and cosmology are split by a giant intellectual
gulf, and the split is proving to be as bitter as any in
the past. The question: How is it that the laws of nature
are balanced so delicately on the knife-edge between the
possibility and impossibility of life? The physical laws
of our universe are perfectly calibrated for our existence
-- but why?
The argument is between two warring factions
in science -- those who believe that the laws of nature
are determined by mathematical relations, which by mere
chance happen to allow life, and those who believe that
the laws have been determined by the requirement that intelligent
life be possible. The bitterness and rancor of the controversy
have crystallized around a single phrase -- the Anthropic
Principle -- a hypothetical principle that holds that the
universe is fine-tuned so that we can be here to observe
it. Many physicists have worried that embracing the Anthropic
Principle will spell an end to scientific progress, but
in The Cosmic Landscape, Leonard Susskind shows how
string theory, rather than reaching a dead end, has led
to a vastly expanded concept of the universe, in which the
contentious principle makes perfect sense.
Prepare to leave behind the narrow twentieth-century
view of a unique universe and herald the cosmic landscape
-- a megaverse pregnant with new possibilities.
Leonard Susskind is widely recognized
as the father of string theory. He has been the Felix Bloch
Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University
since 1978 and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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