From Uncertainty to Certainty : The Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century

by Peat, F. David

• ISBN13: 9780309076418
• ISBN10: 0309076412
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: Joseph Henry Pr

Summary

Early Theorists believed that science promised certainty. Built on a foundation of fact and constructed with objective and trustworthy tools, science consistently produced knowledge. Then disturbing discoveries made by twentieth-century scientists revealed that this knowledge will always be fundamentally incomplete and that a true understanding of the world is ultimately beyond our grasp.
In this book, physicist F. David Peat examines the basic philosophic certainty that characterized the thinking of humankind through the nineteenth century and contrasts it with the startling fall of certainty in the twentieth. Indeed, the nineteenth century was marked by a boundless optimism and confidence in the power of progress and technology. Our ebullience was so great, our belief in science so firm, that in 1900 the President of Britain's Royal Society proclaimed that everything of importance had already been discovered by science.
But it was not long before the seeds of a scientific revolution began to take root.

Author Biography

F. David Peat was born in Liverpool, England. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Liverpool. For many years he engaged in research in theoretical physics at the National Research Council of Canada and during that time had ongoing discussions on the foundations of physics with the late David Bohm. In 1996 Peat moved to a medieval village in Italy where he created the Pari Center for New Learning. Peat is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a Corresponding Member of the European Academy of Arts, Science and the Humanities.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Quantum Uncertainty	p. 1
On Incompleteness	p. 27
From Object to Process	p. 52
Language	p. 71
The End of Representation	p. 90
From Clockwork to Chaos	p. 115
Re-envisioning the Planet	p. 154
Pausing the Cosmos	p. 187
Postscript	p. 215
Godel's Theorem	p. 217
Index	p. 223
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