The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
“No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting.” —Bill Bryson
Brain Pickings and Kirkus Best Science Book of the Year
Every week seems to throw up a new discovery, shaking the foundations of what we know. But are there questions we will never be able to answer—mysteries that lie beyond the predictive powers of science? In this captivating exploration of our most tantalizing unknowns, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to consider the problems in cosmology, quantum physics, mathematics, and neuroscience that continue to bedevil scientists and creative thinkers who are at the forefront of their fields.
At once exhilarating, mind-bending, and compulsively readable, The Great Unknown challenges us to consider big questions—about the nature of consciousness, what came before the big bang, and what lies beyond our horizons—while taking us on a virtuoso tour of the great breakthroughs of the past and celebrating the men and women who dared to tackle the seemingly impossible and had the imagination to come up with new ways of seeing the world.
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Marcus du Sautoy. (2017). The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Marcus du Sautoy. 2017. The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Marcus du Sautoy, The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Marcus du Sautoy. The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.
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- “An engaging voyage into some of the great mysteries and wonders of our world." —Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dream and The Accidental Universe
“No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting.” —Bill Bryson
Brain Pickings and Kirkus Best Science Book of the Year
Every week seems to throw up a new discovery, shaking the foundations of what we know. But are there questions we will never be able to answer—mysteries that lie beyond the predictive powers of science? In this captivating exploration of our most tantalizing unknowns, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to consider the problems in cosmology, quantum physics, mathematics, and neuroscience that continue to bedevil scientists and creative thinkers who are at the forefront of their fields.
At once exhilarating, mind-bending, and compulsively readable, The Great Unknown challenges us to consider big questions—about the nature of consciousness, what came before the big bang, and what lies beyond our horizons—while taking us on a virtuoso tour of the great breakthroughs of the past and celebrating the men and women who dared to tackle the seemingly impossible and had the imagination to come up with new ways of seeing the world. - reviews
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Starred review from February 20, 2017
With uncommon grace, this work illuminates the strides and limitations of humans’ quest to understand nature via math and science. Du Sautoy (The Music of the Primes), Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, takes readers to seven different “edges” of knowledge and shows why “Newton, Leibniz, and Galileo were perhaps the last scientists to know all that was known.” From chaos, which “placed huge limits on what we humans could ever hope to know,” to consciousness, to infinity itself, each edge “represents a horizon beyond which we cannot see.” Patiently and cleverly explaining basic principles, du Sautoy begins most sections with a simple touchstone and builds from there, deftly rendering otherwise recondite theories: a pair of dice leads to probability, a cello to the nature of matter, a pot of uranium to quantum physics. One-on-one interviews with scientists and du Sautoy’s descriptions of his participation in various experiments breathe life into cold data, as when the author perceives his consciousness in another person or observes the illusion of his free will in an fMRI. This brilliant, well-written exploration of our universe’s biggest mysteries will captivate the curious and leave them pondering “natural phenomena that will never be tamed and known.” Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency.
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Starred review from March 1, 2017
Are there limits to human knowledge? Philosophers and religious thinkers have long answered "yes" and then provided examples that turned out to be wrong. A renowned mathematician argues that "yes" might very well be correct.Du Sautoy (Public Understanding of Science/Oxford Univ.; The Number Mysteries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life, 2011, etc.) sets himself a difficult task: "to know whether there are things that, by their very nature, we will never know." He asks, "despite the marauding pace of scientific advances, are there things that will remain beyond the reach of even the greatest scientists, mysteries that will remain forever part of the great unknown?" Readers will thoroughly enjoy his successful effort, which avoids the pitfalls of predicting specifics by addressing general areas. Empty space cannot exist; it's impossible to know the simultaneous location and speed of anything; particles sometimes behave like pure energy. This is true of everything but becomes obvious at the level of atoms and smaller. It's called quantum mechanics, a murky subject that nobody understands fully. The most powerful computer can't forecast a traffic jam or the weather beyond a few weeks because a small change at the beginning may produce enormous, unpredictable changes later. This is chaos theory, an implacable barrier. Deconstructing time and determining the size of the universe remain out of reach, but the mechanism of consciousness, once the poster boy of impossibility, now seems the inevitable product of increasingly advanced studies in neuroscience. The author concludes with his own field, which, unlike science, can prove statements absolutely. Infinity, once considered beyond comprehension, turns out to be full of interesting qualities, and parallel lines often meet, but mathematicians have shown that many statements and entire areas of mathematics are unprovable.A delicious addition to the "Big Question" genre.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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“No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting.” —Bill Bryson
Brain Pickings and Kirkus Best Science Book of the Year
Every week seems to throw up a new discovery, shaking the foundations of what we know. But are there questions we will never be able to answer—mysteries that lie beyond the predictive powers of science? In this captivating exploration of our most tantalizing unknowns, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to consider the problems in cosmology, quantum physics, mathematics, and neuroscience that continue to bedevil scientists and creative thinkers who are at the forefront of their fields.
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