The Shortest History Of Reality (from Plato's Cave To The Mind-bending Discoveries Of Modern Physics - The Human Quest To Explain The World)

By (author) Lewis Geraint F.; Foreword by Muller, Derek
Short description/annotation:
By an award-winning astrophysicist and coauthor of Where Did the Universe Come From?, a brisk, lucid tour of the human quest to uncover reality’s fundamentals, from the atomic to the cosmological
Description:
Making sense of our reality has burdened humanity since the very beginning. In their search for answers, scientists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists have revealed incredible insight into our perception of the world around us—but they have also cracked open a Pandora’s box of discoveries that challenge our understanding of what’s really out there. In The Shortest History of Reality, the idea of “what’s real” is traced from its everyday, commonsense beginnings to the mind-bending discoveries of modern physics. Along the way, we encounter the great shifts in thought that reshaped our view of existence—from ancient philosophy to the rise of science, from Newton’s universe to the strange probabilities of the quantum world and beyond. Blending science, history, and philosophy, Lewis leads a brisk and lucid tour through humanity’s changing grasp of reality, writing the compelling story of how we have tried to make sense of it all. This is no encyclopedia of everything that exists, but it’s an accessible, witty romp through space, time, and some of life’s most complex questions.
Table of contents:
Foreword by Derek Muller (Veritasium) Timeline of Human Understanding of Reality Introduction Part 1: Early Ideas of Reality What Was Reality? The Nature of Reality Part 2: Reality in the Scientific Revolution The Rules of Reality Light, Color, and the Illusion of Reality The Stuff of Nature Part 3: Reality in the Twentieth Century What Is Reality Made Of? The Second Theory of Relativity The Biological Revolution The Quantum Revolution The Particle Zoo Part 4: Exploring the Quantum World What Is a Quantum Wave Really? The March of Unification Symmetry and Antimatter Part 5: The Future of Reality Where Is My Mind? The Unfinished Symphony Where and When Is Everything? Closing Thoughts Further Reading Acknowledgments
Biographical note:
Geraint F. Lewis is a professor of astrophysics at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, part of the University of Sydney’s School of Physics. He is an accomplished academic, publishing more than 500 papers across cosmology, galactic archaeology, gravitational lensing, and the fundamental nature of the universe. He has published numerous other popular science titles. Derek Muller is the creator of Veritasium, a science education YouTube channel.