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The Road to Reality

A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

By Roger Penrose

(31)

| Hardcover | 9780679454434

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Book Description

From one of our greatest living scientists, a magnificent book that provides, for the serious lay reader, the most comprehensive and sophisticated account we have yet had of the physical universe and the essentials of its underlying mathematical theory.

Since the earliest efforts of the ancient Greeks to find order amid the chaos around us, there has been continual accelerated progress toward understanding the laws that govern our universe. And the particularly important advances made by means of the revolutionary theories of relativity and quantum mechanics have deeply altered our vision of the cosmos and provided us with models of unprecedented accuracy.

What Roger Penrose so brilliantly accomplishes in this book is threefold. First, he gives us an overall narrative description of our present understanding of the universe and its physical behaviors–from the unseeable, minuscule movement of the subatomic particle to the journeys of the planets and the stars in the vastness of time and space.

Second, he evokes the extraordinary beauty that lies in the mysterious and profound relationships between these physical behaviors and the subtle mathematical ideas that explain and interpret them.

Third, Penrose comes to the arresting conclusion–as he explores the compatibility of the two grand classic theories of modern physics–that Einstein’s general theory of relativity stands firm while quantum theory, as presently constituted, still needs refashioning.

Along the way, he talks about a wealth of issues, controversies, and phenomena; about the roles of various kinds of numbers in physics, ideas of calculus and modern geometry, visions of infinity, the big bang, black holes, the profound challenge of the second law of thermodynamics, string and M theory, loop quantum gravity, twistors, and educated guesses about science in the near future. In The Road to Reality he has given us a work of enormous scope, intention, and achievement–a complete and essential work of science

Critics

Mind your p's and q's

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose (Vintage, £15) It is not very often that a reviewer recommends a book which he or she is completely unqualified to review; and much less often that the reviewer admits ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

Miracles Aren’t Enough

Roger Penrose is one of the most creative and original mathematical physicists in Britain. This remarkable book is the result of many decades of reflection on our scientific understanding of the physical universe. We have discovered some major things ... (read full critics)

lrb published on Sat, 4 Sep 2010

3 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

Although Penrose claims you can really just skip over the mathematics in this book, if you're going to really understand what he's on about in more than just a surface sense, you'll really have to be able to follow the numbers behind it.
If you're a physics major (particularly cosmology), then ... (continue)

Although Penrose claims you can really just skip over the mathematics in this book, if you're going to really understand what he's on about in more than just a surface sense, you'll really have to be able to follow the numbers behind it.
If you're a physics major (particularly cosmology), then this book is unmissable.

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Dusty Admin said on Aug 7, 2006 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

must-read for maths and physics literals

A master piece from Penrose ... please DO NOT compare him with Hawking

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Lau Siu Sang said on Dec 4, 2008 | Add your feedback

Looking forward to reading it. It will take me quite some time! (over a thousand pages of heavy reading). I will let you guys know.

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Stefano said on Aug 21, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback