Artwork

Content provided by Brian Keating and Big Bang Productions Inc.. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Brian Keating and Big Bang Productions Inc. or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Player FM - Podcast App
Go offline with the Player FM app!

Nobel Prizewinner Frank Wilczek: Beautiful Questions, God, Nobels, Imposters & the Power of Beauty (#101)

1:39:09
 
Share
 

Manage episode 280284253 series 1294742
Content provided by Brian Keating and Big Bang Productions Inc.. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Brian Keating and Big Bang Productions Inc. or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

Does the universe embody beautiful ideas?

Join me on a cosmic journey with Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek. We will embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek’s groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. This is the deep logic of the universe—and it is no accident that it is also at the heart of what we find aesthetically pleasing and inspiring.

Wilczek is hardly alone among great scientists in charting his course using beauty as his compass. As he reveals in A Beautiful Question, this has been the heart of scientific pursuit from Pythagoras and the ancient belief in the music of the spheres to Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and into the deep waters of twentieth-century physics. Wilczek brings us right to the edge of knowledge today, where the core insights of even the craziest quantum ideas apply principles we all understand. The equations for atoms and light are almost the same ones that govern musical instruments and sound; the subatomic particles that are responsible for most of our mass are determined by simple geometric symmetries.

Gorgeously illustrated, A Beautiful Question is a mind-shifting book that braids the age-old quest for beauty and the age-old quest for truth into a thrilling synthesis. It is a dazzling and important work from one of our best thinkers, whose humor and infectious sense of wonder animate every page. Yes: The world is a work of art, and its deepest truths are ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls.

Praise for A Beautiful Question:

“An expertly curated tour across 2,500 years of philosophy and physics . . . [Frank Wilczek] has accomplished a rare feat: Writing a book of profound humanity based on questions aimed directly at the eternal.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Both a brilliant exploration of largely uncharted territories and a refreshingly idiosyncratic guide to developments in particle physics.” —Nature

Get it here: https://amzn.to/3oh48uZ COMING SOON!!!

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek 1/12/21

One of our great contemporary scientists reveals the ten profound insights that illuminate what everyone should know about the physical world. In Fundamentals, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek offers the reader a simple yet profound exploration of reality based on the deep revelations of modern science. With clarity and an infectious sense of joy, he guides us through the essential concepts that form our understanding of what the world is and how it works. Through these pages, we come to see our reality in a new way–bigger, fuller, and stranger than it looked before. BUY IT HERE: https://amzn.to/37v5jAg

Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos:

Host Brian Keating:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  continue reading

402 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 280284253 series 1294742
Content provided by Brian Keating and Big Bang Productions Inc.. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Brian Keating and Big Bang Productions Inc. or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

Does the universe embody beautiful ideas?

Join me on a cosmic journey with Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek. We will embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek’s groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. This is the deep logic of the universe—and it is no accident that it is also at the heart of what we find aesthetically pleasing and inspiring.

Wilczek is hardly alone among great scientists in charting his course using beauty as his compass. As he reveals in A Beautiful Question, this has been the heart of scientific pursuit from Pythagoras and the ancient belief in the music of the spheres to Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and into the deep waters of twentieth-century physics. Wilczek brings us right to the edge of knowledge today, where the core insights of even the craziest quantum ideas apply principles we all understand. The equations for atoms and light are almost the same ones that govern musical instruments and sound; the subatomic particles that are responsible for most of our mass are determined by simple geometric symmetries.

Gorgeously illustrated, A Beautiful Question is a mind-shifting book that braids the age-old quest for beauty and the age-old quest for truth into a thrilling synthesis. It is a dazzling and important work from one of our best thinkers, whose humor and infectious sense of wonder animate every page. Yes: The world is a work of art, and its deepest truths are ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls.

Praise for A Beautiful Question:

“An expertly curated tour across 2,500 years of philosophy and physics . . . [Frank Wilczek] has accomplished a rare feat: Writing a book of profound humanity based on questions aimed directly at the eternal.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Both a brilliant exploration of largely uncharted territories and a refreshingly idiosyncratic guide to developments in particle physics.” —Nature

Get it here: https://amzn.to/3oh48uZ COMING SOON!!!

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek 1/12/21

One of our great contemporary scientists reveals the ten profound insights that illuminate what everyone should know about the physical world. In Fundamentals, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek offers the reader a simple yet profound exploration of reality based on the deep revelations of modern science. With clarity and an infectious sense of joy, he guides us through the essential concepts that form our understanding of what the world is and how it works. Through these pages, we come to see our reality in a new way–bigger, fuller, and stranger than it looked before. BUY IT HERE: https://amzn.to/37v5jAg

Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos:

Host Brian Keating:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  continue reading

402 episodes

All episodes

×
 
Loading …

Welcome to Player FM!

Player FM is scanning the web for high-quality podcasts for you to enjoy right now. It's the best podcast app and works on Android, iPhone, and the web. Signup to sync subscriptions across devices.

 

Quick Reference Guide