16 years out of date
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The publication date given is completely misleading.
It is actually a reprint of the original edition published in 1992! Hence the 'dramatic discoveries' are actually at least 16 years old - an age in the field of physics. There is not even an updated bibliography, most of which are dated in the 1980s.
There is nothing wrong with the book as long as it is regarded as a historical document and not as an up-to-the-minute factual book.
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Myth and matter in mixed measure.
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I have not discovered what this book is meant to be for: its theme, its argument, its purpose. The debunking of the Newtonian view of the world is surely an overworked theme. Perhaps the bibliography provides the best clue; 14 of the 50 volumes cited are the authors' previous works.
Each of ten chapters deals with a separate topic in an inevitably sketchy way. It is not clear whether what is intended is a series of elementary introductions for new students or a set of discussions about the current (1991) state of knowledge for the informed reader. Thus, the presentation varies between ultra-simple explanations of basic concepts, such as talking "of electron waves in the same way as crime waves", and profuse waffly theorising about relatively obscure ideas such as Mach's principle.
Nothing wrong with trying to introduce relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, chaos theory, and so on, in 30 pages each; but to do it you would require a succinctness of style which is here lacking. There is surely no room to go off into two pages of speculation about how a black hole might devour a cosmic string if such a thing ever turned up in its diet.
The most rewarding pages are in a brief interlude, "Confessions of a relativist", which reads like a magazine article. Paul Davies refreshingly describes the difficulties he, like the rest of us, has had in getting his head around the Universe.
There are plenty of short books which deal separately and more thoroughly with each of the other subjects presented here (see Alastair I M Rae on quantum theory for example). In some cases an hour on Wikipedia would be at least as rewarding as ploughing through a chapter.
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Universal Brilliance
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I write this from the point of view of an amateur cosmologist, however, provided the reader understands what he/she reads, this book is just about the best to be found. As far as cosmology is concerned it falls a fraction short of allowing me a full understanding, but isn't that everone's lot in this complex realm.
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A Peek Behind the Veil
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My sense of wonder was engaged from the outset with this book. I did my BSc in physics some years back. I never guessed that the boring old men teaching us about modern physics had managed to take away so much of the scintillating and engaging philosophical ramifications of what we were learning. The writing style is engaging and very clear. I highly recomend this book for students of physics seeking to get more than the nuts and bolts of their discipline.
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