Life is simple : how Occam's razor set science free and shapes the universe /
Johnjoe McFadden
Bok · Engelsk · 2021
| Omfang | vi, 376 sider : illustrasjoner
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| Opplysninger | "Eight hundred years ago, a monk named William of Ockham had an idea that changed our world: entities should not be multiplied without necessity. His principle, which came to be known as Ockham's Razor, meant that simpler explanations were preferable and more likely to be true. In Life is Simple, geneticist Johnjoe McFadden makes an even more ambitious claim: the quest for simplicity is not only crucial to scientific enquiry; it is the defining principle of the universe. Leading us on a pointed tour of centuries of scientific research, McFadden argues that from the idea that the Earth orbits the sun to the development of quantum mechanics and the discovery of DNA, an appreciation for simplicity has offered us ever more sound explanations to the mysteries of the Universe. This is no coincidence: simplicity is embedded in the very fabric of our universe. It is found in the laws of physics that keep a ball in motion until acted upon by another force; it is the guiding principle of evol ution, determining how animals adapt to environmental challenges; and it is even the principle that unites two seemingly incompatible explanations of our universe--general relativity and quantum mechanics. McFadden then takes the universal preference for simplicity one step further, arguing that simplicity was necessary to the emergence of the universe, life, and everything else in it. After demonstrating how unlikely those events were, subject to the whims of chance as much as the laws of physics, he concludes that they only could have happened if our universe, much like a species that sheds superfluous functions to ensure its survival, evolved to achieve ultimate simplicity. From this perspective, the fundamental law of our universe isn't quantum mechanics, or general relativity, or the laws of mathematics; it's a form of natural selection that favors the survival of the simplest. Ultimately, then, Life is Simple is an enlightening and provocative argument that deep links exist betwe en modern science and the nature of our universe. Just as Carlo Rovelli's Reality is Not What You Think sought to link quantum mechanics with ancient questions about metaphysics, Life is Simple argues that Ockham's ideas about epistemology--chosen because they made science possible--may actually have been forced by reality itself"--
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| ISBN | 9781541620445
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