MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03896mam a2200373 a 4500
001 1977731
005 20220609042240.0
008 960621s1997 nyu b 001 0 eng
010 $a 96027912
020 $a019510837X (alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm35033598
035 $9AMJ4465CU
035 $a1977731
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dC#P$dOrLoB-B
050 00 $aQB981$b.S694 1997
082 00 $a523.1$220
100 1 $aSmolin, Lee,$d1955-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n96063966
245 14 $aThe life of the cosmos /$cLee Smolin.
260 $aNew York :$bOxford University Press,$c1997.
300 $aviii, 358 pages ;$c25 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [337]-341) and index.
505 00 $g1.$tLight and Life --$g2.$tThe Logic of Atomism --$g3.$tThe Miracle of the Stars --$g4.$tThe Dream of Unification --$g5.$tThe Lessons of String Theory --$g6.$tAre the Laws of Physics Universal? --$g7.$tDid the Universe Evolve? --$g8.$tDetective Work --$g9.$tThe Ecology of the Galaxy --$g10.$tGames and Galaxies --$g11.$tWhat is Life? --$g12.$tThe Cosmology of an Interesting Universe --$g13.$tThe Flower and the Dodecahedron --$g14.$tPhilosophy, Religion, and Cosmology --$g15.$tBeyond the Anthropic Principle --$g16.$tSpace and Time in the New Cosmology --$g17.$tThe Road from Newton to Einstein --$g18.$tThe Meaning of Einstein's Theory of Relativity --$g19.$tThe Meaning of the Quantum --$g20.$tCosmology and the Quantum --$g21.$tA Pluralistic Universe --$g22.$tThe World as a Network of Relations --$g23.$tThe Evolution of Time --$tEpilogue/Evolutions --$gApp.$tTesting Cosmological Natural Selection.
520 $aCosmologist Lee Smolin offers a startling new theory of the universe that is at once elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before.
520 8 $aIn The Life of the Cosmos, Smolin cuts the Gordian knot of cosmology with a simple, powerful idea: "The underlying structure of our world," he writes, "is to be found in the logic of evolution." Today's physicists have overturned Newton's view of the universe, yet they continue to cling to an understanding of reality not unlike Newton's own - as a clock, an intricate mechanism, governed by laws which are mathematical and eternally true.
520 8 $aSmolin argues that the laws of nature we observe may be in part the result of a process of natural selection which took place before the big bang.
520 8 $aSmolin's ideas are based on recent developments in cosmology, quantum theory, relativity and string theory, yet they offer, at the same time, an unprecedented view of how these developments may fit together to form a new theory of cosmology. From this perspective, the lines between the simple and the complex, the fundamental and the emergent, and even between the biological and the physical are redrawn.
520 8 $aThe result is a framework that illuminates many intractable problems, from the paradoxes of quantum theory and the nature of space and time to the problem of constructing a final theory of physics.
520 8 $aAs he argues for this new view, Smolin introduces the reader to recent developments in a wide range of fields, from string theory and quantum gravity to evolutionary theory the structure of galaxies.
520 8 $aHe examines the philosophical roots of controversies in the foundations of physics, and shows how they may be transformed as science moves toward understanding the universe as an interrelated, self-constructed entity, within which life and complexity have a natural place, and in which "the occurrence of novelty, indeed the perpetual birth of novelty, can be understood."
650 0 $aCosmology.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85033169
852 00 $bmat$hQB981$i.S694 1997
852 00 $bbar$hQB981$i.S694 1997