Euclid's Window

by Mlodinow, Leonard

• ISBN13: 9780684865232
• ISBN10: 0684865238
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Free Pr

Summary

Through Euclid's Window Leonard Mlodinow brilliantly and delightfully leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the latest notions of hyperspace. Here is an altogether new, refreshing, alternative history of math revealing how simple questions anyone might ask about space -- in the living room or in some other galaxy -- have been the hidden engine of the highest achievements in science and technology. Mlodinow reveals how geometry's first revolution began with a "little" scheme hatched by Pythagoras: the invention of a system of abstract rules that could model the universe. That modest idea was the basis of scientific civilization. But further advance was halted when the Western mind nodded off into the Dark Ages. Finally in the fourteenth century an obscure bishop in France invented the graph and heralded the next revolution: the marriage of geometry and number. Then, while intrepid mariners were sailing back and forth across the Atlantic to the New World, a fifteen-year-old genius realized that, like the earth's surface, space could be curved. Could parallel lines really meet? Could the angles of a triangle really add up to more -- or less -- than 180 degrees? The curved-space revolution reinvented both mathematics and physics; it also set the stage for a patent office clerk named Einstein to add time to the dimensions of space. His great geometric revolution ushered in the modern era of physics. Today we are in the midst of a new revolution. At Caltech, Princeton, and universities around the world, scientists are recognizing that all the varied and wondrous forces of nature can be understood through geometry -- a weird new geometry. It is a thrilling math of extra, twisted dimensions, in which space and time, matter and energy, are all intertwined and revealed as consequences of a deep, underlying structure of the universe. Based on Mlodinow's extensive historical research; his studies alongside colleagues such as Richard Feynman and Kip Thorne; and interviews with leading physicists and mathematicians such as Murray Gell-Mann, Edward Witten, and Brian Greene, Euclid's Window is an extraordinary blend of rigorous, authoritative investigation and accessible, good-humored storytelling that makes a stunningly original argument asserting the primacy of geometry. For those who have looked through Euclid's Window, no space, no thing, and no time will ever be quite the same.

Author Biography

Leonard Mlodinow, Ph.D., was a member of the faculty of the California Institute of Technology before moving to Hollywood to become a writer for numerous television shows ranging from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Night Court. He has also developed many bestselling and award-winning educational CD-ROMs, and delivered technical and general lectures in ten countries. He is currently Vice President, Emerging Technologies and R&D, at Scholastic Inc. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
I The Story of Euclid
The First Revolution	3	(1)
The Geometry of Taxation	4	(7)
Among the Seven Sages	11	(6)
The Secret Society	17	(12)
Euclid's Manifesto	29	(10)
A Beautiful Woman, a Liberty, and the End of Civilization	39	(14)
II The Story of Descartes
The Revolution in Place	53	(2)
The Origin of Latitude and Longitude	55	(5)
The Legacy of the Rotten Romans	60	(10)
The Discreet Charm of the Graph	70	(9)
A Soldier's Story	79	(11)
Iced by the Snow Queen	90	(5)
III The Story of Gauss
The Curved Space Revolution	95	(3)
The Trouble with Ptolemy	98	(9)
A Napoleonic Hero	107	(8)
The Fall of the Fifth Postulate	115	(6)
Lost in Hyperbolic Space	121	(6)
Some Insects Called the Human Race	127	(9)
A Tale of Two Aliens	136	(7)
After 2,000 Years, a Face-lift	143	(10)
IV The Story of Einstein
Revolution at the Speed of Light	153	(4)
Relativity's Other Albert	157	(6)
The Stuff of Space	163	(13)
Probationary Technical Expert, Third Class	176	(6)
A Relatively Euclidean Approach	182	(11)
Einstein's Apple	193	(12)
From Inspiration to Perspiration	205	(5)
Blue Hair Triumphs	210	(7)
V The Story of Witten
The Weird Revolution	217	(2)
Ten Things I Hate About Your Theory	219	(4)
The Necessary Uncertainty of Being	223	(5)
Clash of the Titans	228	(3)
A Message in a Kaluza-Klein Bottle	231	(4)
The Birth of Strings	235	(4)
Particles, Schmarticles!	239	(10)
The Trouble with Strings	249	(6)
The Theory Formerly Known As Strings	255	(8)
Epilogue	263	(4)
Notes	267	(26)
Acknowledgments	293	(2)
Index	295