Fundamentals

A gorgeous and inviting overview of the fundamental facts of physical reality. -- Steven Pinker, Johnson Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Enlightenment Now If you were to go back just two hundred years and tell people what we knew, from the origins of the universe to the molecular basis of life, and how weird and unintuitive nature is at the atomic scale, they would think we were crazy. But if you showed them what we have created with that knowledge, they would think we were magicians. In this engaging and highly accessible book, Frank Wilczek shows how the vast edifice that is modern science was constructed with only a few ingredients and assumptions, but depended crucially on a way of thinking--about the nature of evidence and how it applied to the world around us. Anyone interested in the underlying basis of the complexity of today's science will enjoy this book. -- Venki Ramakrishnan, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and author of Gene Machine Frank Wilczek is not only one of the world's greatest physicists; he's also one of its greatest explainers. Fundamentals is lucid, beautiful, and revelatory. -- Steven Strogatz, professor of mathematics, Cornell University, and author of Infinite Powers Whether or not you're accustomed to reading physics for pleasure, the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek's Fundamentals might be the perfect book for the winter of this plague year... Wilczek writes with breathtaking economy and clarity, and his pleasure in his subject is palpable... What a reader gets in Fundamentals is the native language of physics - mathematics - precisely translated by someone who has spent a lifetime (about a billion thoughts!) on these forces that shape our physical world -- Nell Freudenberger * The New York Times * This is an exuberant, gorgeously crafted, and intellectually thrilling book, written by one of our greatest living scientists yet hospitable to all. To be reminded that time and space, mystery and order, are so much stranger and more generous than we can comprehend-this is a gift to public life and moral imagination in a young century where what is visible and tangible feels chaotic and constricting. This book is also unexpectedly spiritually thrilling. Wilczek makes the remarkable move of picking up and evolving the classic scientists' faith that their investigations would reveal the mind of our maker, as well as Einstein's self-described 'cosmic spiritual sensibility.' What began as an exposition, as Wilzcek writes, 'grew into a contemplation.' The result is a profoundly enriched understanding, accessible to the religious and non-religious alike, of what it means to be human-and what we might be pointing at when we use the word God. -- Krista Tippett, host of On Being and author of Becoming Wise [Wilczek] turns out to be a true visionary * The Times * For those with more scientific yearnings, and who regret not taking a few courses in college to learn about the physical world, theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek offers a way to catch up . . . With his clear and joyful voice, Wilczek succeeds very well, and for good reason . . . There is no calculus required; this is not Physics 101. Instead, Wilczek talks about modern physics and cosmology from a more broad-brush and philosophical perspective, often linking their findings to the real world - how they affect us. In this age of rising skepticism, he wants his readers - whom he imagines to be lawyers, doctors, artists, parents or simply curious people - to be 'born again, in the way of science'. * Washington Post * A lucid and riveting narrative of the fundamentals-what Wilczek calls 'the central messages of modern physics,' which are not just facts about how the world works but also 'the style of thought that allowed us to discover them. * Scientific American * Mr. Wilczek's prose pulses with enthusiasm for its subject -- Christopher Levenick * Wall Street Journal * The universe at its grandest and most minuscule is explore

Frank Wilczek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004. He is the prize-winning author of numerous books, including A Beautiful Question and Longing for the Harmonies. Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT; founding director of the T. D. Lee Institute and chief scientist of the Wilczek Quantum Center in Shanghai; and a distinguished professor at Arizona State and Stockholm universities.