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Math Books Media Book Reviews Science

Roger Penrose and the Road to Reality 346

Posted by timothy from the my-compass-is-broke dept.
jkauzlar (Joe Kauzlarich) writes "You've had a long, tedious day at work. You have some money in the bank and decide that you need to spend some of it on yourself rather than hand it over to the Man. Therefore, being a nerd, you go straight to the bookstore after work. You don't see anything exciting in the new releases for science fiction; you look at the new pop-science books, but nothing jumps out at you from the shelf- but wait... what's this massive new book by the acclaimed physicist Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality? The subtitle seems a bit presumptuous: 'A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe.' You pick up the heavy volume to inspect its contents ..." Read on for the rest of Kauzlarich's review.
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
author Roger Penrose
pages 1136
publisher Knopf
rating 10
reviewer Joe Kauzlarich
ISBN 0679454438
summary General audience introduction to modern physics

Flipping through the eleven-hundred pages, you notice the gratuitous inclusion of mathematical formulae and the chapter titles on the page headers -- "Quantum algebra, geometry, and spin," "Gravity's role in quantum state reduction," "Calculus on manifolds" -- suggest a far more exclusive audience than yourself, a lowly paper-pusher with a four-year degree. "But then, what's this doing in the popular new releases?" you ask yourself, "Shouldn't it be hidden away in the darkened corner of the store's physics section?" But that's where you're wrong, you realize, glancing through the author's preface; this book is for you: Penrose has, it seems, composed a mathematical physics book for the general audience -- and not merely an introductory one, but one that takes you to the frontiers of modern theory.

The trouble with the common popular-science books that propose to illustrate modern physical theories is in their implicit premise of avoiding mathematical notation and concept in favor of plain English. This works to an extent, but ultimately breaks down when the nature of the subject matter itself is mathematical. Indeed, after reading the wonderful Dancing Wu Li Masters, the reader is no more prepared to plunge into a textbook on modern physics or to comprehend even the titles of the latest mathematical physics papers on Arxiv.org. Physicists know about the fundamental particles or the nature of space only through the mathematics that model the phenomena. Which is not to say that such English language renderings are useless, but they skillfully devise to distance themselves from what physicists actually do, as well as to reenforce readers' natural aversion to numbers and formulae.

Penrose's approach is not to dive head-first into the most strenuous material or to assume a proper background for the comprehension of advanced physics; instead, the first several chapters are devoted to building the necessary mathematical subtext for the remaining bulk of the book. The volume's length is not, as is often the case, a result of lengthy diversions or pedantry (needless complexity); Penrose keeps his eye on the ball throughout, consistently informing the reader how the topic at hand is related to the over-arching theme and infusing the more well-known pedagogy with creative insight, so that even a talented math major may learn from the introductory chapters on number systems or geometry. What's more, the careful organization of the disparate topics permits a fluid drift from one to the next. The effect is a single cohesive book and not a collection of notes or essays.

With 390 illustrations and a generous supply of endnotes and bibliography entries, it's clear that Penrose didn't consider the work completed with the text alone. The inclusion of short problems within the footnotes hints to the reader what concepts are important to understand. The usual footnote-commentary is withheld for the endnotes at the end of each chapter.

It's probable that the name "Roger Penrose" might excite some memories you may have of his previous works, published over a decade ago, both of which explore the mind-brain relationship. At least one of these (Shadows of the Mind -- the other is the more popular The Emperor's New Mind) proposes a quantum theoretical explanation for consciousness which was perhaps too liberal to have been taken seriously by neurologists. Penrose's efforts in quantum theory have, however, been more successful than those in neurology: in 1988 he was awarded the Wolf Prize, one of the very highest honors in mathematics (perhaps second only to the Fields Medal), along with Stephen Hawking, and has made invaluable contributions to quantum physics for the past several decades, proving himself to be one of the finest scientific minds of our day. In consequence to his stature, it's certainly a treat for laypeople that Penrose has donated the time and energy to the creation of a monumental expository work for general consumption.

Whereas the average pop-science journalist reaches upwards to accrue a book's material, Penrose's acknowledged expertise on the subject forces him back towards the ground again. If you think about it, I suppose this is as difficult a task, since much of what Penrose describes he's known for forty or fifty years (he was born in 1931). He apologizes in the final chapter for the necessity of handpicking among the dozen or so "theories of everything," sometimes according to his own professional biases. Today's leading theory, "String Theory" along with the theory of "Loop Quantum Gravity," and the little known "Twister Theory," are all covered in the later chapters; the first portion of the book builds the mathematical foundations for the succeeding chapters, which give an indepth treatment of quantum physics and quantum field theory. These topics are followed by the previously described "theories of everything."

A glance at the table of contents may make or break your purchasing decision; chances are, if you find the mysteries of the terms somehow galvanizing, then you'll enjoy the book. On the other hand, if the eclectic terms frighten you, you should perhaps look at the preface (where Penrose gives solace to anxious readers), or it may be best to avoid the book altogether.

As I mentioned earlier, little has been done for the general audience to explore the wide expanse between physics and mathematics. The Road to Reality is, in this respect, a virtually pioneering effort, and given its size, scope and quality, I would venture to guess it will remain the de facto text in its area for many decades to come, and may safely be placed on your bookshelf next to E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, or Benjamin Yandell's recent (*highly* recommended) The Honor's Class: Hilbert's Problem's and Their Solvers.

I am fortunate to have had some mathematics education and so am familiar with the basic principles of complex numbers, calculus, and geometry, making the first several chapters, while still insightful, less toilsome than it might've been. I suspect that the average bright high school graduate would have no trouble with Penrose's quick treatment of these concepts. I would recommend the reader have at least some familiarity with the basic terms of mathematics and physics (i.e. when Penrose mentions "set" you know he's referring to a particular mathematical structure) or the book could overwhelm you quickly. Additionally, readers would be at an advantage having read "English-based" modern physics books such as The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Michio Kaku's Hyperspace, Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe or a similar book about 20th century quantum physics. Either way, it's safe to say that despite the virtuosic readability of the text, it's still going to take an intellectual commitment on the part of the reader to reap all of the available knowledge."

You can purchase The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Roger Penrose and the Road to Reality

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  • Also in the June issue of Discover (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:18PM (#12503412)
    There's an article about what I suppose I would describe as his own flavor of decoherence.

  • Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach (Score:5, Informative)

    by PaxTech ( 103481 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:22PM (#12503452) Homepage
    GEB was mentioned above, and I just had to post about it.. It's one of the best books I've ever read. If you've never read it and you're a geek, and at all interested in how the mind works, you'll absolutely love it. I've read it three times, and the last time I even almost understood the whole thing.. :)

    It's an absolute classic, I can't recommend it highly enough.
    • I read that book too - I would assert than more than geeks would dig it - musicians of course and visual artists.

      Would love to get my hands on a similar book that's just as engaging;

      • Try Hofstadter's own "Metamagical Themas", which reproduces his column from Scientific American. While it's no GEB, it's got some entertaining stuff.

        It's doubtful GEB will ever be topped for its breadth and sheer eccentricity. The only bit that I find drags is all the DNA/RNA stuff.
        • The only bit that I find drags is all the DNA/RNA stuff.
          Then you didn't get it. Once you realize that DNA is a program, and the proteins that the DNA codes for is a computer that reads and interprets the program, you realize that it's all a wonderful loop. It is truly amazing stuff, and GEB is a good intro to DNA for non-biology-trained geeks.

          Read the book again (I too, skimmed over the DNA stuff the first time...)

          yo.

          • Oh, I read it, several times (I first read GEB in high school, and I'm 35 now), and I did get it. I just found it didn't have the zip that some of the other parts did. Actually, it's mostly my fault - because I already know how it works, I found it to be somewhat repetitive.

    • Re:Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DustMagnet ( 453493 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:32PM (#12503563) Journal
      If you liked GEB, you'll like Penrose's older book The Emperor's New Mind. It's a fascinating read, even if you don't accept his final conclusion that human brains are quantum computers.
      • I agree completely. I disagree with Penrose's conclusion, but reading the book made me admire him for several reasons:

        -he's clearly smarter than I am. Not that remarkable, but we all run into idiots who have nothing to teach us every day. Reading the words of someone who has an unambiguously superior intelligence is not something that we do every day.

        -he's generous with his talents. Like Carl Sagan, he's got an obvious love for what he studies, and he takes the time to write the books for anyone who wants to commit a little brain power to learn something new. Hey, thanks! I appreciate it.

        -he understands how science is supposed to work. The Emperor's New Mind was the second book on the same subject. His first book ran into a lot of criticism, and so he wrote the second book taking that into account, to address the criticism. That's the mark of a real scientist like Penrose vs. a crank. A crank would have written the book, bristled at the criticism, and proceed to while like a little bitch about how the scientific "orthodoxy" rejects any new idea, because it threatens their little imbecilic closed minds and comfortable little lives in their ivory towers. Penrose shows us all how to be criticised: accept the criticism, learn from it, refine your theories, and try to persuade the critics again. Lather, rise, repeat. Penrose knows that he bears the burden of proof.

        Read Penrose's books.

        • but his AI theories are terrible (Score:5, Insightful)

          by hqm ( 49964 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @09:38PM (#12505399)
          Like most physicists, he suffers from the illusion that he knows everything about everything. His theories of intelligence and conciousness are so bad they are not even wrong.

          As far as I can tell, his argument was "quantum physics is complicated. The brain is complicated. Therefore it can only be explained as quantum physics".

      • I have the emperor's new mind, Ive never been able to get through it all, because its complete bullshit. It's been 10 years, but from what I remember, Penrose tries to integrate his personal beliefs and personal metaphysics into theories into a physics/epistemology/AI. And he draws wild conclusions from stupid stuff. He'll throw a couple integrals on the page and claim he's proved something about human nature or the nature of the universe.

        Penrose is the Rush Limbaugh of Physics.

      • You know, I'd be very, very surprised, if not stunned, if the brain didn't rely on quantum effects.

        I'd actually go so far as to say that my entire worldview, as pertaining to biology and it's application of physics/chemistry, would crumble.

        All 'inventions' are based off physical principles. In many instances these are taken from the existing biological world, and if they are not, it is soon found out that nature has something similar already. And it's getting so that more and more inventions which are at

        • Re:Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Red Pointy Tail ( 127601 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @11:21PM (#12506106)
          One of the riposte for the quantum-brain theory is that of MRI/PET scans on the brain - apparently that messes up the quantum states. However, your memory and emotions remain intact - indicating that perhaps the functioning of your brain is quantum-independent.

          How do you defend your theory against that?
        • My biggest problem with Penrose's "consciousness stems from quantum uncertainty" theory is that it makes no sense from an evolutionary biology point of view. Nearly all of molecular biology is about using protein machinery to provide repeatability and the minimization of quantum uncertainty including, as far as we can tell, the function of nerve cells in lower animals. All of a sudden, in the homo genus, this is supposed to have been reversed so that quantum uncertainty becomes the source of consciousness?
    • Roger Penrose (with his father) was the inventor of the "Penrose Cube", and that 3-tined fork thingy at age 16. Both of which form the basis of some of Eschers more famous work. See here for more. [worldofescher.com] A little bit of trivia more geeks should know...

      On the topic of GEB, I totally agree with you. The AC who dissed it as "for the kids" is full of himself. (Or way smarter than I am) I first read it at ~14, and it remained for years one of the most inspiring books I'd read.

  • That's "Twistor Theory". (Score:5, Informative)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:23PM (#12503463) Journal
    If you spell it correctly, and then do a web search, you'll see that it isn't as obscure as you might have thought. It's also beautiful stuff.

  • Same Penrose? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skazatmebaby ( 110364 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:24PM (#12503476) Homepage
    Is this the same Roger Penrose that patented a pattern (The Penrose Tile) and then sued a toilet paper company for having a similar pattern printed on their toilet paper?

    And then sued the chair of my painting department, Clark Richert for using the same pattern in a *painitng*

    And then lost that case, learning that my chair figured that pattern out years before him - by accident? The proof being a photo of the painting - on the side of a bus. The license plate was used as the evidence for date.

    I'm not quite sure if I like this guy :)

    • Re:Same Penrose? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:36PM (#12503615)
      Penrose patented the concept of the Penrose Tile, but the patent had run out before Kimberly-Clark made the toilet paper. Penrose just made a stink about it publicly. He didn't sue.

      Further, there is no single Penrose Tile pattern - it is the concept of a pattern, or lack of one, that emerges using only two tiles. You can combine them in such a way that there can be no repeating pattern.

      Penrose's patent covered the ability to create an acyclic pattern using only two tiles.

      Penrose never sued anybody - Clark Richert claimed discovery of the two tile acyclic pattern at the same time as Roger Penrose.

      Either you're trolling or your professor is another Isaac Newton - pissed off because Liebniz got there first.

      • Re:Same Penrose? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by skazatmebaby ( 110364 )
        Here's what I'm basing the toilet paper thing on -

        Page 261/262 of, The Art of Looking Sideways, Alen Fletcher

        Page 262 shows an illustrations of the Penrose Tile.

        The last sentences of page 261 is, (quote)

        "Sir Roger came across one of these enhanced toilet rolls. He was not amused. He started legal proceedings. A pattern with a patent."

        I base the story of Richert on having him as a professor.

        The only mention of the Penrose tile called the Richert-Penrose tile is in this:

        http://www.zometool.com/pdfs/r [zometool.com]

      • Re:Same Penrose? (Score:3, Informative)

        by tootlemonde ( 579170 )

        Penrose never sued anybody

        This blog [stefangeens.com] cites a story from The Wall Street Journal from April, 1997 that appears to be genuine. [wsj.com]

        LONDON -- Sir Roger Penrose has seen his work on quantum physics and relativity theory celebrated in countless papers. But it was toilet paper that really got the renowned mathematician's attention.

        When Sir Roger examined the "Kleenex quilted toilet tissue," made by the British unit of Kimberly-Clark Corp., what he saw was no ordinary piece of toilet paper. Embossed on the sur

    • Re:Same Penrose? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How can a licence plate be used to verify a date? If the plate was 100 years old it doesn't mean the bus was painted 100 years ago.

      • Re:Same Penrose? (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Elementary. Buses being commercial vehicles are registered yearly. Many states have licence plate stickers to verify that said vehicle has a current registration. The sticker includes the year the registration was issued. A picture that includes the painting and a licence plate with the sticker would prove that the painting existed at least as early as the date indicated by the registration sticker. QED. HAND.

  • His presentation (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slimey_limey ( 655670 )
    I saw him when he came to Seattle recently. It was hard to believe that he wrote such a book, especially after he gave the most disorganized presentation that I've ever seen. Nevertheless, I got an autographed copy.
    • Did he use hand-drawn overheads?

    • Re:His presentation (Score:2, Interesting)

      by skubeedooo ( 826094 )
      I've had the honour of going round his house a couple of times, and I have to say that this man is incredible. He is one of those people who can explain something, and make you understand everything he's talking about until you walk away and then realise, when it's too late, that actually you don't really understand anything at all. He breathes confidence (but in a characteristically english sort of way).
    • I saw him give a presentation a couple of years ago, it was pretty well organized, although his hand-drawn slides were a bit messy. But considering his age, even LaTeX slides is probably asking too much :)

  • I think this is good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:25PM (#12503497)
    Too often I see people reading these "physics for the general public" books that simplify so much they're almost misleading, and then the people who read them assume they're experts and walk away drastically mislead, repeating silly things like the idea that the schrodringer's cat metaphor is meant literally or string theory literally means there's all these dimensions right next to us. Unfortunately some of the things in modern physics-- like strings or quantum mechanics-- if you don't at least sort of understand the math, you don't understand it at all. It's nice to see someone at least attempting to do a "general public physics" book that actually tells it like it is rather than trying to give silly zen koans.

    I just hope this book doesn't do anything like imply that there's any evidence whatsoever for the veracity of string theory.
    • Yeah when I heard him give a talk a couple of years ago, he made the point that there is a huge effort devoted to theories of high energy physics that make essentially no predictions that are testable experimentally in the forseeable future. On the other hand, there are plenty of experimental results that are not explained (or the maths is too hard to calculate using these theories). The generation problem, quark masses, etc etc.

    • Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Informative)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @06:48PM (#12504229) Homepage
      Too often I see people reading these "physics for the general public" books that simplify so much they're almost misleading, and then the people who read them assume they're experts and walk away drastically mislead, repeating silly things like the idea that the schrodringer's cat metaphor is meant literally or string theory literally means there's all these dimensions right next to us.
      Well, actually string theory literally does claim those extra dimensions exist, and Schrodinger's cat is not just a metaphor.

      I've read The Road to Reality, and would not recommend it to anyone who doesn't have at least an undergraduate degree in math or physics. You have to read hundreds and hundreds of pages of math before you even get to any physics, and the math is not explained thoroughly and clearly enough that a layperson could really understand it. For me, it was like, "Oh yeah, I remember that course in grad school," but if I hadn't already had the course, I wouldn't have been able to follow it.

      If you need somewhere to start, and don't know any physics, try one of the free introductory physics books listed here [theassayer.org]. After that, if you want to try to bring yourself up to the level Penrose is shooting for, try some of these:

      • Relativity Simply Explained by Martin Gardner
      • Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip Thorne
      • Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler (special relativity, with a little more math)
      • Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity by by Taylor and Wheeler (general relativity, with a little more math)
      • QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman
      • Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin

  • Book review, Zork style (Score:5, Funny)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:26PM (#12503502) Homepage
    You are in a dark room. You see exits to the north, south and west.

  • Normally I don't like Big Fat Books... (Score:4, Informative)

    by MythMoth ( 73648 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:29PM (#12503529) Homepage
    ...but this is the exception to that rule. It's sitting on the corner of my desk, and it's been calling to me since I got it.

    I'm actually just taking a couple of months off to finish it properly. Like TAOP this is one of those books you need to read with a notebook to hand. Reading it in the bath could prove hazardous...

  • I dunno about you... (Score:5, Funny)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:29PM (#12503531) Homepage Journal
    You've had a long, tedious day at work. You have some money in the bank and decide that you need to spend some of it on yourself rather than hand it over to the Man.

    but if this were me described above, I'm spending it on alcohol, or something to give me a cheap thrill.

    A geek book that's going to "take an intellectual commitment on the part of the reader" isn't on my top 10 list.

    And people wonder why geeks don't get laid more often.
    • Maybe some people consider intellectual pursuit to be of greater importance (or of greater fulfillment) than getting laid (and later, having to deal with some, likely moronic, person). Ever thought about that, you insensitive clod?

      * Please note: I speak as both a man and a woman as I know we both find each other quite moronic
      • Maybe some people consider intellectual pursuit to be of greater importance (or of greater fulfillment) than getting laid

        Spoken like a true virgin

        Please note: I speak as both a man and a woman

        Wow, a hermaphrodite! Cool! It must be really meaningful to you when somebody tells you to go fuck yourself, huh?
        • Spoken like a true virgin

          Perhaps spoken like a virgin, but infact, not.

          To speak as a man or a woman does not imply that the person meant to say they were a man and a woman. Your logic needs work.
    • And people wonder why geeks don't get laid more often.

      Ummm... the only people that wonder why geeks don't get laid more often are... geeks.
    • This is a nerd book, for nerds. Smart people with a slightly unhealthy interest in taking an intellectual commitment in a subject they enjoy.

      A geek likes to wear penny-arcade t-shirts and play games while talking about technology they have no hope of truly comprehending.
      • At the risk of drifting off-topic, I disagree with your comment. That's a reinterpretation of definitions based on 'geek-chic' and all those 'cool' people who decided it was okay to be a bit of an individual - with uniform thick-rimmed glasses, stupid tee-shirts and a cocky attitude that made them feel smarter then they actually were.

        Geek -> comes from 'Genius' and 'freak'. It means a smart social outcast, an intelligent person who is eccentric, etc...

        Nerd -> is a social outcast, usually obsessiv
    • Then what the hell are you doing here? You must have missed the signs on all the doors saying that this is the Secret Dork Lair, where people would rather learn something new than impair themselves with alcohol and bang their fuckin' skulls together.

      Oh, I see. You came here to lay your stunning wit on the unsuspecting Slashdot masses, who've been long enough without a real troll that they forgot what the word really means. "Geeks don't get laid." Oh, the hilarity!

      --grendel drago

  • What is this, a Zork review? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:29PM (#12503534) Homepage Journal
    The Road to Reality Score: 0 (Surreal)
    You've had a long, tedious day at work. You have some
    money in the bank and decide that you need to spend
    some of it on yourself rather than hand it over to the
    Man. Therefore, being a nerd, you go straight to the
    bookstore after work. You don't see anything exciting
    in the new releases for science fiction; you look at
    the new pop-science books, but nothing jumps out at
    you from the shelf- but wait...

    There is a massive new book entitled "The Road to
    Reality" here.
    > look at book
    The subtitle seems a bit presumptuous: 'A Complete
    Guide to the Laws of the Universe.'
    > get book
    You pick up the heavy volume.
    How about just leading in with something a bit less prosaic and a bit more opinioned about the work itself?

  • Not to Forget (Score:4, Informative)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:30PM (#12503539) Homepage Journal
    The Tao of Physics [amazon.com] by FRITJOF CAPRA, which, I think, predates The Dancing Wu Li Masters.

  • Another One (Score:5, Informative)

    by drooling-dog ( 189103 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:33PM (#12503571)
    This reminded me of another book that I liked for much the same reason: Inward Bound by Abraham Pais (1986). It's basically a history of modern physics, but unlike most such books does not shy away from the mathematics (without which the physics would make little sense). In fact, I just pulled it off of my shelf and see that one of the testimonials on the back is from none other than Roger Penrose...

  • It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (Score:5, Funny)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:33PM (#12503575) Homepage Journal
    Joe, a frustrated writer, was writing a book review. He should have been content to convey the qualities of the book, but he couldn't contain his literary aspirations. After struggling through a massive tome on the nature of the universe he deserved to indulge his one vice. No editor would stand in his way. No simple slashdot user could thwart him!

    -Peter

  • Dancing Wu Li Masters (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:33PM (#12503576) Journal
    I read The Dancing Wu Li Masters a bunch of years ago, and subsequently have seen its accuracy disparaged a number of times, but never with any details.

    Does anyone have an informed opinion on its failings?

  • I've been a fan of Penrose for a while. Somewhere along the way I ran across the title and concept of this book and put it on my Amazon wish list. But before I ordered it I decided to try checking it out at Barne's and Noble (I know, I'm a bastard).

    So here I am looking across the P shelf, and I see The Emperor's New Mind, but not The Road to Reality. Then I realized that thing I thought was a dictionary next to it was the book I was looking for. Thus began my inner debate as to just how much time I was

  • My 'theory of everything' (Score:3, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:35PM (#12503594)
    everything sucks

    or in its alternate form

    everything is a load of shite

    Needless to say this quite brilliant encapsulation of everything has sparked some debate as to whether the shite is real or metaphysical.

  • Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cavemanf16 ( 303184 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:35PM (#12503597) Homepage Journal
    I'm gonna go pick this one up ASAP! I've been looking for something readable, yet fully useable in light of how much I gained in the desire to learn more of mathematics and physics from Brian Green's The Elegant Universe. Unfortunately, I haven't come across anything nearly as beautifully written as Brian Greene's work yet. This book review makes this book sound downright fun for the nerd in me!
    • not to read, but to bend a few pages and put it on my shelf to give me a level of 'apparent knowledge' others could not comprehend.

      If my boss asks too many question, I'll use my white board to copy some of the formulas.

  • Sciscoop/Huntsville Times Review (Score:5, Informative)

    by apsmith ( 17989 ) * on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:35PM (#12503604) Homepage
    Here [sciscoop.com]. A bit more substantive than the slashdot one, if I do say so myself.


    Penrose's take on the universe is a pretty amazing one, but a very difficult one to grasp. The main point is: we just don't know enough about the world yet. Not enough mathematics, and our experiments are nowhere near adequate to get final answers.

    • Now, I'm probably going to be flamed due to my gross ignorance on the subject of Penrose and his science, but I did hear one thing about it once that made me a bit irritated: the Quantum Mind.

      As far as I understand, his hypothesis is that within each neuron in the brain are certain structures that act as 'links' to the subatomic world of quantum phenomena. That for some reason, the immense complexity and sophisticated architecture of the brain is somehow insufficient to produce a conscious mind. That just
      • The "quantum mind" idea was definitely the theme in his books of a decade or so ago, but this one is really more an argument for re-thinking the direction the majority of physicists seem to be going in trying to come up with a "theory of everything".

        The "quantum mind" idea had, at its base, the concept of some new kind of physics that links quantum mechanics and general relativity together, in a way very different from the supersymmetry/string theory take of recent years: Penrose thinks gravity is more fun
  • Slightly off topic but bear with me. I recently started a new job which gives me about an hour (half hour each way) of reading time on public transport each day. I had gotten out of the habit of reading over the last few years (mostly the fault of my job) and am now hoping to re-educate myself.

    The sort of books that I am looking for are readable texts rather than college type text books (pretty much the way this book is described). I have already stuck this one on my public library order list and would lik
  • ...what's still used in university physics courses? Not most of the books mentioned by others. What is? Another extremely weighty tome (and those who've held it know it could be used to bludgeon Governor Arnold in one whack) called Geometrodynamics. I tossed it casually back on the shelf at Borders recently and nearly broke the shelf.

    If it's a choice of someone giving me their POV based on their understanding of the math and having an encyclopaedia sized copy of the math which I can work with to get my o

  • torn (Score:2, Informative)

    by tdmg ( 881818 )
    I saw this book at the store the other day. I couldn't find anything else that looked interesting, but still, the book seemed a little watered down. Not intense enough, no challenge, and not because it was so expertly written that anyone could understand it. The section I glanced at looked primarily theoretical with a peppering of math, not a comprehensive view both theoretically and mathematically.

    A friend of mine looked over it after I put it back on the shelf. She's a gifted writer, but couldn't pas

    • Re:torn (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @06:02PM (#12503839) Journal
      If you can't grok calculus, you are never (repeat: never) going to get 'the more advanced theories of physics'.

      The ideas behind calculus aren't that hard to understand, but teaching them is a skill - most teachers I've seen tend to just explain the ideas then hope sufficient example problems will do their job for them. It's a lot easier if you learn to derive the basics (d/dx, integral around a path, partial differentials etc.) from first principles - it's not that you'll use the first-principles approach ever, but the understanding is worth the learning pain.

      To give another datapoint on Physics' needs: I recall my first college term as a physics undergrad - we had a "basic primer" in maths (a 4 week course) which was essentially the 'A' level Further-Mathematics syllabus. Those unfortunates who hadn't done further-maths (about 50% of people) were a bit shell-shocked by the end of the primer course. Once that was out of the way, we got into the meaty stuff that you need for a Physics BSc. Most of us had to work damned hard to grok that - integrating partial differential tensors, residues, integral transforms ... yuk. And doing it was only half the battle - you had to know *when* to do it...

      I guess the point I'm labouring to say is that some stuff is just complicated - irreduceably so. If you remove the complexity, you remove the understanding and therefore the whole point.

      Simon

    • Re:torn (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drooling-dog ( 189103 )
      she and millions of others want to be able to grasp the more complex theories of physics while avoiding calculus

      Mathematics pretty much is the language of Physics, unfortunately for many. Without it, you're pretty much limited to explaining concepts metaphorically through analogies to things from everyday life. You can't do that for very long without seriously misrepresenting what it is that you're trying to explain, and of course you'll never communicate any knowledge that can be successfully built upon

  • I betcha the oil is bubbling away at it's boiling point right about now....

  • An Interesting Index (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @05:47PM (#12503705) Homepage Journal
    Last summer I read a clutch of books attempting to define life. After reading Sex and the Origins of Death [amazon.com] by W.C. Clark, I decided to restrict my readings to authors born in the 1930's. I did this because people of this generation seemed to be in a position to sum up a lifetime of scientific investigations in their respective field. Sir R. Penrose is coeval with people of this age group and I suspect his book represents a unique opportunity to review Physics as his generation came to know it. Younger authors, like Lee Smolin [amazon.com] might better present the bleeding edge.
  • There are some very smart people like Daniel Dennett who dismiss Penrose...This is a mistake. Pay attention to Penrose. He knows more about how everything in reality works than I think anyone alive today.
    • Having taken a Phil of Mind course with Dennett, I can't say that he was unfair to Penrose. And Dennett isn't alone - try Colin McGinn, for example. The problem is that Penrose is a True Believer in free will: without free, unpredetermined human choices he believes that there is no autonomous self, so no consciousness, no responsibility. So he needs a source of indeterminacy to defeat the inexorable forces of determinism. The trouble is, quantum effects can't give you that kind of inteterminacy at the neuor
      • By saying that Penrose is a True Believer in free will, you seem to be casting someone who believes the same as probably >80% of humanity as an extremist.

        If you redefine "consciousness" and especially "responsibility", you can fit them into any such framework. What you speak of as "consciousness", presumably, is the mental sense that "I" exist, not metaphysical awareness (although the first could encompass an awareness of the second). You can say that those are the same but without proof that's just an

  • Hilbert's Problem's (Score:5, Funny)

    by kubalaa ( 47998 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @06:00PM (#12503826) Homepage
    I think you've misspelt the title of the book. Surely you meant: The Honor's Clas's: Hilbert's Problem's and Their Solver's, a classic in the field of egregiou's misu'se of apostrophe's.
  • Other Hofstadter titles, like Metamagical Themas, are also worth looking at, but none more than "Le Ton Beau de Marot", especially ... no I'll leave them unmentioned. There are so many facets that come up to surprise one so sweetly that to mention any of them will be to diminish the reader's pleasures of discovery.

    I can't claim to be pi-lingual but it's a fun concept...ank

    • I absolutely love Dennett and Hofstadter's "The Mind's I", more than any of either author's other books.

      OOTC: This book has a lot to do with reality as humans experience and perceive it. I found it to be mind expanding, a major reason why I read books.

  • Have you actually read the book? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @06:07PM (#12503889) Journal
    Come on. Be honest.

    Scattered throughout the book are sections that speculate on Platonism, and half-dead cats, and astronauts orbiting black holes and anthropic principles.

    The rest of the book is math. And some of it is hard. Maybe iI was supposed to learn about "Clifford Algebra" from juvenile stories about a Big Red Dog. And maybe, I somehow missed the high school geometry lessons about fiber bundles. Perhaps I've simply forgotten my nursery school lullabies on algebraic topology, but I've found that if you actually read the book for the content, and not for the "mindblowin' shit", it's a tough read. Not impossible, mind you. It's just less literary than Goedel Escher Bach.

  • Size (Score:3, Funny)

    by booch ( 4157 ) <slashdot2010@cra ... m ['k.c' in gap]> on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @06:14PM (#12503968) Homepage
    What's up with such a big book? Does he have Stephen Wolfram syndrome [amazon.com] or something?

  • FWIW.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @06:25PM (#12504053) Homepage
    ...the paperback version comes out in the UK this summer and this autumn (er, fall...) in the US.

    I had second thoughts when I saw the hardback price; but I'll probably go for the paperback version.
  • Physicists know about the fundamental particles or the nature of space only through the mathematics that model the phenomena. Which is not to say that such English language renderings are useless, but they skillfully devise to distance themselves from what physicists actually do, as well as to reenforce readers' natural aversion to numbers and formulae.

    Mathematics is just another language that has a certain felicity in explaining "structure". What you can say easily in mathematics may be considerably mor
    • Maths has a language, but it is a lot more, or a lot less, depending upon which way one want to look at it.

      Maths is the art of finding what must be true within a system often expressed in liguistic form, but whereas a language is a local (though often approximately copied) utilitarian structure that binds meaning together; mathematics is a one-to-one mapping of a structure that is found to be the same by all practicing mathematicians (which is pretty close to objectivity if you ask me) onto an agreed lin

    • Ah, but Mathematics is much more than simply a language in which physical ideas can be expressed. It's also a symbolic system through which truth can be derived and tested. So no, I don't think that you can thoroughly explain the workings of the Universe without it, regardless of how long you take doing it. That's why so many advances in modern physics had to await enabling advances in mathematics.
  • As I posted elsewhere, Penrose needs to be taken VERY seriously. This is plain in Andrew Hodges' [Turing's biographer] extremely interesting lecture on Turing's struggles with the same problems that Penrose points out in ENM.

    Turing and Penrose [turing.org.uk].
    • On the contrary, Penrose, genius though he is, needs to be ignored on the subject of computability. Fortunately, he is. He doesn't have anything new to contribute and repeatedly misrepresents Godel's theorem.

  • Penrose's history of trashing AI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @07:07PM (#12504396) Homepage
    I bought his book "The Emperor's New Mind" in 1990 because it was rumored to be an argument for why conventional computers could not 'do real AI' - I wanted to read something that cut across the grain of my own beliefs.

    The ironic thing is that now I very much agree with what he wrote in "The Emperor's New Mind": I have attended enough "Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics" type conferences to finally start to believe in the connection between consciousness and quantum mechanics.

    I definitely used to believe in the idea of 'strong AI' on convential computers, but not now.

    I don't have time right now to dig up links (it has been a really long work day, and now my wife and I are going to party :-) but search for "Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics" for interesting reading material.

    -Mark
  • After you finish reading about the Hilbert Problem solvers, you might want to pick up John Derbyshire's excellent _Prime Obsession_ that goes thru the Reimann hypothesis that neatly fuses calculus and number theory. If you've studied either, the notion of putting both under the same umbrella is truly psychodelic.

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