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Are there really laws governing the universe?
Or is the order we see imposed by the prisms of our nervous
system, a mere artifact of the way evolution wired the brain?
Do the patterns found by science hold some claim to universal
truth, or would a visitor from another galaxy find them
as quaint and culturally determined, as built on faith,
as the world's religions?
In this stunningly original book, set among
the mountains and canyonlands of northern New Mexico, George
Johnson explores the human hunger for pattern, the innate
drive to find (or impose) order in our capricious world.
In this land of strange juxtapositions where magic and science,
religion and reason, constantly bump up against each other,
Johnson introduces us to an amazing diversity of people
who see the world through varied lenses, who find vastly
different pictures in the night sky.
Just north of Santa Fe, the Tewa pueblo
of San Ildefonso sits at the bottom of the plateau on which
stands the laboratory city of Los Alamos. While the people
of San Ildefonso carry out secret ceremonies in their kivas
and dance to the rhythms of the seasons, the physicists
of Los Alamos struggle with some of the most complex ideas
of quantum theory, particle physics, and a new science called
the physics of information, which seeks to understand the
very source of pattern and order in the world.
Los Alamos and San Ildefonso are just two
pieces in this jigsaw puzzle of world views. In the dizzying
heights of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains,
the faithful flock to an old Catholic church for samples
of holy soil said to cure all ills. Descending from this
land of miracles to the foothills around Santa Fe, we visit
a revolutionary think tank called the Santa Fe Institute.
Here scientists are focusing their research on questions
that seem to hover within the penumbra between science and
religion: How, from the random jostling of molecules, did
life arise and evolve to the point where it can contemplate
its own beginnings? Are we accidents of the universe --
miracles -- or is there a reason for us to be here?
By examining some of the most radical new
theories of physics and biology emanating from the laboratories
of northern New Mexico and comparing them to the intricate
belief systems of the Tewa Indians, a Catholic sect called
the Penitentes, and other inhabitants of this land, Johnson
casts the scientific enterprise in a startling new light.
The result is an intellectual adventure story of the highest
order, a journey to the far reaches of the scientific frontier
where the human soul struggles to make sense of life's deepest
mysteries.
George Johnson writes about science for
The New York Times, and has written regularly for
The New York Times Book Review and The New York
Times Magazine. He is the author of three previous books:
Architects of Fear, Machinery of the Mind,
and In the Palaces of Memory. A former Alicia Patterson
Fellow and the recipient of a Special Achievement in Nonfiction
award from the Los Angeles chapter of PEN, Mr. Johnson grew
up in New Mexico and now lives in Santa Fe.
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