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Title: The Character of Physical Law by Jeff Riggenback, Richard Phillips Feynman, Jeff Riggenbach ISBN: 1-879557-43-6 Publisher: Audio Scholar Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 2 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Feynman Delivers
Comment: This is yet another book that attempts to convey the essence of physics to common people. After explaining exactly why it can't be done, arguing that you'll never get it, Feynman goes right ahead and does it anyway.
For each topic, you get a feel for his goal in covering a topic. He explains gravity, yes, to explain gravity, but also because by explaining it he can also convey what essential properties gravity has that other laws have.
He also explains the difference between fundamental laws and the consequences of those laws. That the individual laws are reversible, but that probability is responsible for the arrow of time. He spends a lot of time showing the difficult relationship between the basic laws (which are reversible) and the irreversibility of events. Both are characteristics of the physical universe but the latter is not a fundamental law. The latter is a logical outcome of them.
So there's a hierarchy, which goes; fundamental laws like gravity at the ground level, consequences of them like irreversibility and surface tension at one level up, organic chemistry further up, then eventually concepts like tree, frog, man, pain, beauty, good and evil - each at a higher level, but based upon the levels below them, and difficult to fully predict using only the laws of the lower levels. The levels can be extended up and down. Below gravity is the unification theory of everything. Above good and evil are love, politics, etc.
And then he asks, of the extremes on this hierarchy, the fundamental laws and the most abstract concepts, which is closest to God? After asking for patience with his religious reference, he spends little time before revealing his belief that the question is flawed. To understand God is to understand how the levels interrelate; how the fundamental laws were "chosen" so that they would lead to the unfolding of all the beautiful complexity that we see around us.
Is this what you want to learn? Why else do we read these books than to attempt to gain a bit more insight into the eternal questions. Most authors that tackle the nature of the universe have a theological axe to grind (the need for God or not) and can't hide it. This book did more on this topic, with fewer pages, while offending me the least because of any theological bias (either way), than anything I've read before.
Rating: 5
Summary: Three Thumbs up
Comment: Can someone with freshman college physics understand Professor Feynmans theoretical physics? This cassette really combines well everything from Newton's Laws to quantum theory to Einsteinian gravity to the very mathematical (yet not too much) nature of physical law. The answer is with this two tape cassette (which I purchased and prefer) a definite yes. In spite of the fact that many of the readers aren't theoretical phyicists, this book really brings into focus "hard" physics. I bought this set hoping to benefit from Feynman's more humanistic teaching style and I was pleased with the results.
I highly recommend this read (listen).
Rating: 4
Summary: The beauty of physical laws
Comment: One the greatest theoretical physicists and popular lecturer, Feynman expresses his view on the puzzles, controversies, and problems at the core of physical theory. He uses as an example the law of gravitation to show that despite the simplicity of physical laws, they are not exact, there is always a mystery, always a place where there is further work to be done, so "scientists must stick their heads out." And what is most remarkable is not what scientists have been able to discover, but what nature has taught us. Feynman stresses the importance of mathematics as the key to any system of scientific laws (mathematics is more than just a language, it is language plus logic). This is a series of lecturers to be read preferably by those individuals who have a solid background in physics, otherwise you may find your neurons will not know in which direction they should fire! As Paul Davis rightly says: "theoretical physics is one the hardest of human endeavors, combining as it does subtle and abstract concepts that normally defy visualizations with a technical complexity that is impossible to master in its entirety." Feynman did have the genius to deal with it!
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