| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'Reports from the cutting edge, presented with eloquence and style . it gives the dizzying sense that science is poised on the brink of a new world of discovery - a world stranger and still more beautiful than anything imagined yet' - F.T. ' Every once in a while a physicist, with a gift for writing and an empathy for the non- scientific mind, reports back like an anthropologist from Mars. Gell- Mann has written such a book' - SPECTATOR
Product Description
In "A Brief History of Time" Stephen Hawking described our attempts to formulate the physical laws of the universe. In this work, Nobel Laureate, Gell-Mann, argues that this is only the beginning of what we need to know about our world and ourselves. What if we know those laws? What next? Seeking a unified theory of all matter, whether it is the structure of galaxies or the moment of creative thought in the human mind, this book defines the underlying unity in such diverse fields as linguistics, archaeology, economics and politics.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Gell-Mann is a brilliant scientist and his contribution to particle physics and chaos theory cannot be underestimated; his thought is first-class. The topic of this book is emergence, complexity and the future of world, and he has a lot to say about all of these: the importance of holism as opposed to pure reductionism, of generalisation as opposed to pure specialisation.
But as a whole this book does not cohere. It lacks focus and narrative thread, weaving between topics with only minimal attempts to connect them. I have no doubt that the three parts of this book are intimately linked, but the links Gell-Mann imagines to be obvious are, to most minds, far from it.
In short, the ideas espoused here are admirable, but are better addressed elsewhere. A couple of popular science books examine parts of this: James Gleick's 'Chaos' and Steve Grand's 'Creation' are examples. Unfortunately there is nothing else I have experienced that looks at the whole, even in the fragmentary way Gell-Mann does, so there is still a genuine need for this book. If you can get through it, that is.
But as a whole this book does not cohere. It lacks focus and narrative thread, weaving between topics with only minimal attempts to connect them. I have no doubt that the three parts of this book are intimately linked, but the links Gell-Mann imagines to be obvious are, to most minds, far from it.
In short, the ideas espoused here are admirable, but are better addressed elsewhere. A couple of popular science books examine parts of this: James Gleick's 'Chaos' and Steve Grand's 'Creation' are examples. Unfortunately there is nothing else I have experienced that looks at the whole, even in the fragmentary way Gell-Mann does, so there is still a genuine need for this book. If you can get through it, that is.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is written by a true Renaissance mind. Gell-Mann gives us a tour of existing and emerging areas of science and by showing the connections between these diverse areas he shows that there is more to science than the unfortunate extreme specialization that tend to make people from different fields unable to communicate fruitfully. He also shows us how much we may gain from a genuine interest in research areas different from our own.
Gell-Mann's authorship convinces me that that C. P. Snow's argument about the two cultures is not a law of nature.
Popular science, though difficult and often rightfully criticized, is vitally important, especially when introducing young people to scientific ideas. The Quark and the Jaguar is my new standard.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Too often, we have been subjected to speculative theory-of-everything-is-nigh type books from physicists and physics writers with dubious credentials. This is written by a first-rate thinker, probably the greatest theorist since Feynman. It is fascinating to see sober, well argued analysis and comment on his own field of endeavour, and the sections where he casts his eyes over politics, environmental problems, economics, and the transitions that need to be made by societies show how a top class thinker can operate at high levels across disciplinary boundaries. Undoubtedly the best non-fiction book that I have read in the past few years.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
trying very hard to make progress in "complexity" theory
The "reductionistic" scientific method, which seeks to reduce phonomena to simpler and more general underlying bludprints, has dominated the last three centuries. Read more
Published 11 months ago by rob crawford
Sometimes enlightening more often infuriating
Gell-mann is one of the greatest minds of the theoretical physics community. In this books he looks at how chaos and complexity happen, not contrary to the idea that disorder must... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Andrew Dalby
Jaguars exist
I gave the book four stars because jaguars do exist. They are the largest cat native to the American continents, and they are related to lions, tigers and leopards. Read more
Published 14 months ago by William Newtspeare
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Science & Nature > Astronomy & Cosmology > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > History & Philosophy > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Physics > Philosophy of Physics
- Books > Science & Nature > Physics > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Physics
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Philosophy
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
