Inside this Book – But, of course, light is the ultimate source of life. Without the light coming from the sun, there would be no life here on earth. Light is not only our medium of contact with the world; in a very real sense, it is the basis of our existence. If the difference between us and dead matter is organization, it is sunlight that provides the energy and the impetus for the self organization of matter into life, on every scale, from the individual cell to the life of the whole planet and from my morning awakening to the whole history of evolution. We will never know completely who we are until we understand why the uni- verse is constructed in such a way that it contains living things. To comprehend that, the first thing we need to know is why we live in a universe filled with light. Thus, the problem of our relationship with the rest of the world rests partly on at least one question that science ought to be able to answer: Why is it that the uni- verse is filled with stars? But before we approach this question, there is another kind of relationship that I must comment on; that between author and reader. This is, as my literary friends have been telling me for some time, a rather problematic relationship. After all, the dominant literary theory taught by my colleagues these days is that books must be read as if, in a certain sense, the author does not exist. But, beyond my natural protest against such an assertion (in my present situation), there are special problems that arise when the author is a scientist and the reader is not. Anyone who sets out to teach ideas from physics to those who are not specialists, whether as a teacher in a lecture room or through a book such as this one, faces a curiously paradoxical situation. To begin with, there is no doubt that a great many people have a deep interest in physics and cosmology.
- Full Book Name – The Life of the Cosmos
- Author of this Book – Lee Smolin
- Language – English
- Book Genre – Science
- Download Format – PDF
- Size – 19 MB
- eBook Pages – 367
The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin PDF eBook
- Inside this Book – But, of course, light is the ultimate source of life. Without the light coming from the sun, there would be no life here on earth. Light is not only our medium of contact with the world; in a very real sense, it is the basis of our existence. If the difference between us and dead matter is organization, it is sunlight that provides the energy and the impetus for the self organization of matter into life, on every scale, from the individual cell to the life of the whole planet and from my morning awakening to the whole history of evolution. We will never know completely who we are until we understand why the uni- verse is constructed in such a way that it contains living things. To comprehend that, the first thing we need to know is why we live in a universe filled with light. Thus, the problem of our relationship with the rest of the world rests partly on at least one question that science ought to be able to answer: Why is it that the uni- verse is filled with stars? But before we approach this question, there is another kind of relationship that I must comment on; that between author and reader. This is, as my literary friends have been telling me for some time, a rather problematic relationship. After all, the dominant literary theory taught by my colleagues these days is that books must be read as if, in a certain sense, the author does not exist. But, beyond my natural protest against such an assertion (in my present situation), there are special problems that arise when the author is a scientist and the reader is not. Anyone who sets out to teach ideas from physics to those who are not specialists, whether as a teacher in a lecture room or through a book such as this one, faces a curiously paradoxical situation. To begin with, there is no doubt that a great many people have a deep interest in physics and cosmology.
- Full Book Name – The Life of the Cosmos
- Author of this Book – Lee Smolin
- Language – English
- Book Genre – Science
- Download Format – PDF
- Size – 19 MB
- eBook Pages – 367
