Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws [Paperback]

A wide-ranging and illuminating account of how our understanding of the world has developed by uncovering 'hidden unities' in nature.One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying principles. In Hidden Unity, John Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, focusing on particle physics and cosmology. With a minimum of mathematics, he describes examples such as the unity of celestial and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century).One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying principles. In Hidden Unity, John Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, focusing on particle physics and cosmology. With a minimum of mathematics, he describes examples such as the unity of celestial and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century).One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying laws, or principles. In Hidden Unity, eminent physicist John Taylor puts many of these findings into historical perspective and documents how progress is made when unexpected, hidden unities are uncovered between apparently unrelated physical phenomena. Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, such as the unity of celesl³t