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Roger Penrose

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe Hardcover – 29 July 2004

by Roger Penrose (Author)

4.6 954 ratings

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The Road to Reality, some 1000 pages long, aims to provide a comprehensive account of our present understanding of the physical universe, and the essentials of its underlying mathematical theory. No particular mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader is assumed - the early chapters providing the essential mathematical background for the physical theories described in the remainder of the book. The aim is to convey something of an overall understanding - a feeling for the deep beauty and philosophical connotations of the subject, as well as of its intricate logical interconnections. Clearly, a work of this nature is challenging, but there is enough descriptive material to carry the less mathematically inclined reader through, as well as some 450-500, mostly hand-drawn, figures. The book provides a feeling for all the key issues and deep current controversies, and counters the common complaint that cutting-edge science is fundamentally inaccessible. The topics covered in this book include: the roles of different kinds of numbers and of geometry in physics; the ideas - and magic - of calculus and of modern geometry; notions of infinity; the physics and mathematics of relativity theory; the foundations and controversies of quantum mechanics; the standard model of particle physics; cosmology; the big bang; black holes; the profound challenge of the second law of thermodynamics; string and M theory; loop quantum gravity; twistors; fashions in science; and new directions.

Print length

1000 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Jonathan Cape Ltd
Publication date

29 July 2004
Dimensions

16.6 x 6.5 x 24.4 cm
ISBN-10

0224044478
ISBN-13

978-0224044479
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From the Publisher

Product description

About the Author

Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their joint contribution to our understanding of the universe.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jonathan Cape Ltd; First Edition (29 July 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 1000 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0224044478
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224044479
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.6 x 6.5 x 24.4 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 837,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 528 in Popular Astronomy
- 1,118 in Cosmology (Books)
- 27,360 in Nature

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4.6 954 ratings

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Vasi

Massive, heavy-going, and conceptually dense.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 8 July 2023

Verified Purchase

More to come in couple of months. Now too busy reading it.

Helpful

Brick sized, 1000+ pages explorations of Math, Physic and most of all, Cosmology

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 29 January 2022

Verified Purchase

* Synopsis

This book is, in my estimation, is built for Maths, Physics and Cosmology as presently understood. It's helpful if you've encountered these topics previously as these often meshed together.

* Target Audience, A-level, H.N.D, Degree, Masters?

It's helpful if you have at least an A-level in these topics; Maths or Physics or Astronomy, prior to starting this book. All the better if have any degree background.

* Contents

1. the roots of science 2. An ancient theorem and a modern question, 3. Kinds of numbers in the physical world, 4 Magical complex numbers, 5. The geometry of logarithms, powers and roots, 6. Real-number calculus, 7. Complex number calculus, 8. Riemann surfaces and complex mappings, 9, Fourier decomposition and hyperfunctions, 10. Surfaces, 11. Hypercomplex numbers, 12. Manifolds of n dimensions, 13 Symmetry groups, 14. Calculus on manifolds, 15. Fibre bundle and gauge connections, 16 The ladder of infinity, 17 Spacetime, 18. Minkowskian geometry, 19 The classical fields of Maxwell and Einstien, 20. Lagrangians and hamiltonians, 21. The quantum particle, 22, Quantum algebra, geometry and spin, 23 The entangled quantum world, 24. Dirac's electron and antiparticles, 25 The standard model of particle physics, 26. Quantum field theory, 27 The big bang and its thermodynamic legacy, 28 Speculative theories of the early universe, 29. The measurement paradox, 30. Gravity's role in quantum state reduction, 31. Supersymmetry, supra-dimensionality and strings, 32 Einsteins narrower path and lop variables, 33. More radical perspectives; twistor theory, 34. Where lies the road to reality?

* What's the book like?

The book starts very simply and progressively builds upon Math, Physics and Cosmology. The further you read, the topics become more expanded and detailed. The book often has several lines, single sentences to carry the weight of the argument.

It's definitely better if you've read these topics before in other books. Its strength is carrying multi-level, multi-topic arguments along. My limit on previous reading is reading the standard model of particle physics. It's required on its own. I have this book on my shelf.

After later Cosmology parts, I became a bit overwhelmed with my inability to follow it with what it's trying to explain.

* Summary

This book tries its best to explain these topics. It requires other books beforehand. If you are into Cosmology, it's right up your alley.

7 people found this helpful

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Mike M

Dense

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 4 December 2022

Verified Purchase

This is not a 'brief history of time' level popularization, aimed at those with a casual interest. It is thorough and intense, requiring close attention and a high level of mathematical knowledge. I will finish it one day...

2 people found this helpful

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Marcus

A distillation of the work of a genius

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 29 June 2014

Verified Purchase

In some ways, this is more like a collection of academic papers than a book for the layman.

I have a degree in Physics from rather a long time ago. I read and partly understood The Road to Reality, but not to the extent that I did all the exercises. Realistically you need a pretty good grasp of maths to follow this book. It does start off with the easy stuff, but if you do not already know some complex analysis and calculus, you'd have to be a genius to keep up.

What about the content? Good coverage of Special and General Relativity. I am not convinced by the non-standard tensor notation in the context of this book, though I think it would help if you actually needed to work with tensors, and particularly twistors. Quantum Field Theory is really only just touched on, but in a very clear way. Nice explanations of manifolds.

As many other reviewers have mentioned, String Theory and Inflation are introduced only to dismiss them. They are both very fashionable and it is probably not a good career move for a young physicist to agree with Penrose here. Fashion aside, I think he has a point.

Penrose's own baby, Twistor theory, is introduced in the penultimate chapter. Frankly I can see why people prefer strings -- this is complicated stuff; Penrose himself admits that it is not a theory that works yet, though I suspect there are some good ideas here, and it is a shame that fashion works against him.

I really liked the chapter on Shroedinger's cat, EPR and the Bell inequality. Penrose explains the main strands of philosophical ideas around the interpretation of quantum mechanics. There is a lot of woolly thinking on this subject, and Penrose deftly demolishes ideas such as many worlds and consciousness as a cause of reduction. Penrose's own position is that more physics is needed to explain quantum reduction. I would like to agree, but I think he needs to spell out his case against decoherence more clearly.

Why five stars? The amount of quality content is astonishing. Ideas fly off the page. There are few books that represent such a condensation of thought.

5 people found this helpful

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David Irvine

A very hard read.... But enlightening

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 9 September 2021

Verified Purchase

Having graduated 40+ years ago with a degree in computer science and mathematics, and having read about the first 100 pages so far I can honestly say I have understood about 1/3 of what I have read. I'm sure it's going to get harder as I progress through Roger Penrose's Road to Reality, but it is addictive and very thought provoking. The sad thing is I think Roger Penrose is trying to explain many concepts clearly and topologically, and maybe 5+ years ago I would of grasped most of the wonderful concepts. But I do get a 'flavour' of what Roger Penrose is explaining. Fascinating!
Only 4 stars because I think this book does require degree level mathematics or physics to be able to grasp many of the ideas.

3 people found this helpful

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The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe Hardcover – 29 July 2004

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