xii
Introduction
a journey of exploration to provide to everybody who is interested, at least
a glimpse of the most challenging of nature’s mysteries. We use no mathematics and include only one well-known formula. We begin our story with
Neanderthal Man and end it with the foreseeable applications of quantum
computing. In between, we will guide our readers not only along the wellestablished paths, but also to those regions where physics, which is our chosen
discipline, is wavering in its choice of the path ahead. Along the way, we will
often pause to lift our spirits with an occasional anecdote or short story, for, as
with all voyages, our journey will be worth nothing unless we enjoy ourselves.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with what we mean by
science, its origins, methodologies and what differentiates it from other forms
of human intellectual activity. Also, we note that there is such a thing as good
science and bad science [2]; the latter can be worse than ignorance, and it is of
primary importance to discriminate between the two.
Science began its existence as the deferential daughter of the noble discipline of philosophy. However, such has been the extraordinary progress of
science and mathematics in the past 120 years that it now seems futile to us
to speculate on how things should be (philosophy), without first having had
a close look at how they are in reality. This leads, of course, to the question of
what we mean by reality, which is by no means a trivial question, as we shall
see in Chap. 1.
Part II of the book is an up-to-date 2 presentation of the state of the art in
the most glamorous subfields of modern physics. We believe that a knowledge of these advances is an essential part of the cultural endowment of
any educated human being. Too often, these fields are concealed behind the
erudite mathematics and scientific jargon that is integral to science. Professional scientists sometimes forget that their work is funded almost entirely
by the taxpayers, the general public of their respective countries. The knowledge that a privileged few unearth is a human right for everybody, akin to a
UNESCO human heritage site. Quantum mechanics, general relativity and
modern cosmology are the pyramids, Parthenon and cathedrals of our epoch,
together, of course, with the most outstanding advances in other sciences.
By the time that readers arrive at Part III of the book, they will have
concluded that although much has been discovered in the last century, there
are still many gaps in our knowledge, and even contradictions between wellestablished theories. Newton once wrote: I do not know what I may appear to
the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier
2 Some areas of physics are advancing so quickly that even since the time of writing there will have
been new developments, but we shall do our best.
Introduction
a journey of exploration to provide to everybody who is interested, at least
a glimpse of the most challenging of nature’s mysteries. We use no mathematics and include only one well-known formula. We begin our story with
Neanderthal Man and end it with the foreseeable applications of quantum
computing. In between, we will guide our readers not only along the wellestablished paths, but also to those regions where physics, which is our chosen
discipline, is wavering in its choice of the path ahead. Along the way, we will
often pause to lift our spirits with an occasional anecdote or short story, for, as
with all voyages, our journey will be worth nothing unless we enjoy ourselves.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with what we mean by
science, its origins, methodologies and what differentiates it from other forms
of human intellectual activity. Also, we note that there is such a thing as good
science and bad science [2]; the latter can be worse than ignorance, and it is of
primary importance to discriminate between the two.
Science began its existence as the deferential daughter of the noble discipline of philosophy. However, such has been the extraordinary progress of
science and mathematics in the past 120 years that it now seems futile to us
to speculate on how things should be (philosophy), without first having had
a close look at how they are in reality. This leads, of course, to the question of
what we mean by reality, which is by no means a trivial question, as we shall
see in Chap. 1.
Part II of the book is an up-to-date 2 presentation of the state of the art in
the most glamorous subfields of modern physics. We believe that a knowledge of these advances is an essential part of the cultural endowment of
any educated human being. Too often, these fields are concealed behind the
erudite mathematics and scientific jargon that is integral to science. Professional scientists sometimes forget that their work is funded almost entirely
by the taxpayers, the general public of their respective countries. The knowledge that a privileged few unearth is a human right for everybody, akin to a
UNESCO human heritage site. Quantum mechanics, general relativity and
modern cosmology are the pyramids, Parthenon and cathedrals of our epoch,
together, of course, with the most outstanding advances in other sciences.
By the time that readers arrive at Part III of the book, they will have
concluded that although much has been discovered in the last century, there
are still many gaps in our knowledge, and even contradictions between wellestablished theories. Newton once wrote: I do not know what I may appear to
the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier
2 Some areas of physics are advancing so quickly that even since the time of writing there will have
been new developments, but we shall do our best.