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Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science
"What a splendid book! Reading it is a joy, and for me, at least, continuing reading it became compulsive. . . . Chandrasekhar is a distinguished astrophysicist and every one of the lectures bears the hallmark of all his precision, thoroughness, lucidity."—Sir Hermann Bondi, Nature
The late S. Chandrasekhar was best known for his discovery of the upper
limit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1983. He was the author of many books, including
The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes and, most recently,
Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.
The late S. Chandrasekhar was best known for his discovery of the upper
limit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1983. He was the author of many books, including
The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes and, most recently,
Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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January 20, 2018
The Aestheticism of Science
Truth and Beauty is a collection of papers and lectures written and delivered over a period of 40 years by the Nobel laureate astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. The subject is the aesthetics of science in terms both of the motivations of individual scientists and of the global scientific collective as it exists now as well as historically.
The book confirms at least two aspects of scientific aesthetics that seem to have general, perhaps universal, applicability. First, scientists have a very difficult time assessing their own motivations much less those of their colleagues or scientific forebears. Second, the disciplinary criteria about what constitutes a superior theory or explanation are ex-post rationalisations, much more like advertising slogans than standards for research.
Chandrasekhar makes a good start in his narrative by stating clearly what he’s after. He wants to know what makes scientists tick. What do they and their profession consider a success? Having stated this objective he seems to ignore it and hardly even speculates about what the personal and professional values of scientists might be. He barely touches on the issue in the rest of the book.
The mathematician, G H Hardy, in his Apology of a Mathematician, expressed an acute hesitancy about his writing about mathematics because it wasn’t doing mathematics and added nothing to the discipline. It seemed to him somewhat vulgar, professional gossip perhaps, to subject what mathematicians do to scrutiny from outside the profession. He also feared inappropriate generalisations about his colleagues.
Chandrasekhar shares Hardy’s reticence but much more sharply. He is after all commenting on not just his own discipline of astrophysics, but also on the practice of science from cosmology to quantum biology and everything in between. It’s fair to say, I think, that he is not only fearful of offending his colleagues, but also of appearing a fool to a wide range of other scientists.
So instead of analysing the possible motivations of scientists by investigating their psyches, he tells rambling stories of some great names - Newton, Boltzmann, Einstein, Eddington and the like. These stories are largely anecdotal, padded with all sorts of irrelevant biographical fluff. When they are more than that, mainly in those involving astrophysics, they document not the aesthetics of those involved but the historical progress of the professional argument, sometimes equation by equation. The confrontation of research criteria with each other is never attempted. Yet this is the essential locus of what he’s meant to be investigating.
Even the anecdotal evidence is unenlightening. Newton’s self assessment of why he did what he did was because he felt “like a boy playing on the sea-shore.” This theme of play is recurrent among many scientists - Michelson and Dirac among them - but it hardly constitutes an aesthetical value. This is the equivalent of the reply of an opera-goer “Because it was cool” to the question “why did you go.” It means nothing to anyone but the speaker. The reader is left wondering what aspect of play is, as it were, in play among these scientists. Once again, no personal motivations are even speculated upon.
Regarding the disciplinary criteria of value for science, Chandrasekhar seems particularly confused at the outset. His first named criterion is epistemological: “The basic concepts of science gain their validity in proportion to the extent of the domain of natural phenomena which can be analysed in terms of them.” This seems to be a common sentiment among many scientists and philosophers of science: if it explains more it is a better theory.
But this epistemological criterion is patently an empty slogan. It all depends on the criterion of what ‘explains’ means. Whatever this criterion is, it is not going to derived from science itself. For example relativity physics and quantum physics are clearly more widely applicable than Newtonian physics. But relativity physics creates the problem of infinite density in black holes and cannot explain mass ejection from these entities. Quantum physics purports to explain the very small, yet in doing so it brings along the paradoxes of quantum entanglement and Schrodinger uncertainty. And relativity physics is inconsistent with quantum physics. So in exactly what way are relativity and quantum physics superior to Newtonian physics? Whatever the answer, it is more than simply epistemological generality.
On the other hand, Chandrasekhar, also posits an explicitly aesthetical criterion for science, one that consists in the “continual and increasing recognition of the uniformity of nature.” Other similar comments about the harmony of parts and wholes are quoted from Francis Bacon in the 16th century onwards. The difficulty of course is that this aesthetical criterion, what the Chinese call Wa, harmonious interaction, is a contrary to the epistemological criteria of explanatory scope. A quantum universe is not something harmonious by anyone’s standards. Einstein hated it as a scientific abomination. Chandrasekhar even admits in his later lectures that an element of surprise, a sort of pleasing discord, has become virtually de riguer in modern scientific theory. One scientist’s harmony seems to be another’s pedestrian triviality.
There is, finally, a difference between a professional criterion of success that is inferred from how science has progressed in the past, and one that is imposed on work done in the present. The first is a rationalisation, a very unscientific generalisation that ignores the twists and turns and dead ends of most of scientistifuc thought. The second is a considered judgment which might be applied to current work on the basis of experience. Chandrasekhar seems to be entirely oblivious to the distinction. He offers not the slightest clue to how ‘good science’ is conducted. He is unwilling to venture anything about the current criterion of success, I think, largely because it is changing all the time. There is no such criterion because the criterion shifts as fast as scientific results.
One is reminded of Lord Kelvin’s remarks to his physicist colleagues toward the 19th century. At a annual conference his announced confidently that all the fundamental problems of physics had been satisfactorily addressed. What remained were issues of ‘mopping up’ in the discipline. Within only a few years physics was rocked by Einstein and Bohr. Whatever criterion of good science Kelvin had been using, it had nothing to do with that in use a generation later. If Chandrasekhar had the insight to say something like this, he might be interesting. As it is, science emerges from his prose as somewhat tedious and boring.
I understand entirely the difficulty scientists have in detecting their own personal motivations and ingrained professional standards. It is difficult for any of us to articulate why we do what we do or what constitutes a success in doing it. Nonetheless the difficulty of the task is hardly relevant when there seems to be a growing worldwide movement of distrust and dismissal of science as merely self-aggrandising intellect.
Aestheticism is the term denoting the myopic confirmation of one’s aesthetic prejudices. It is a psychological disorder that involves projecting what one wants to be the case on to the environment at hand. Psychiatrists associate this disorder with forms of anality, the obsessive attention to irrelevant or incidental detail. By this criterion Chandrasekhar‘s presentation is scientific aestheticism. It is a sort of idealisation of what’s in his head, perhaps about why he thinks he should do astrophysics, but certainly not about why he actually does astrophysics.
Few buy the traditional claims of ‘scientific objectivity’ since such a thing is patently impossible. Scientific aestheticism has substituted for traditional religious beliefs, with about the same degree of irrationality. Idiosyncratic preferences, politics, and lucky mistakes play a much bigger role in scientific advance than, method, professional standards and raw intellect, disinterested or not. What is possible as well as necessary is that scientists, like the rest of us, come out of the aesthetical closet and get serious about who they are and why.
Truth and Beauty is a collection of papers and lectures written and delivered over a period of 40 years by the Nobel laureate astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. The subject is the aesthetics of science in terms both of the motivations of individual scientists and of the global scientific collective as it exists now as well as historically.
The book confirms at least two aspects of scientific aesthetics that seem to have general, perhaps universal, applicability. First, scientists have a very difficult time assessing their own motivations much less those of their colleagues or scientific forebears. Second, the disciplinary criteria about what constitutes a superior theory or explanation are ex-post rationalisations, much more like advertising slogans than standards for research.
Chandrasekhar makes a good start in his narrative by stating clearly what he’s after. He wants to know what makes scientists tick. What do they and their profession consider a success? Having stated this objective he seems to ignore it and hardly even speculates about what the personal and professional values of scientists might be. He barely touches on the issue in the rest of the book.
The mathematician, G H Hardy, in his Apology of a Mathematician, expressed an acute hesitancy about his writing about mathematics because it wasn’t doing mathematics and added nothing to the discipline. It seemed to him somewhat vulgar, professional gossip perhaps, to subject what mathematicians do to scrutiny from outside the profession. He also feared inappropriate generalisations about his colleagues.
Chandrasekhar shares Hardy’s reticence but much more sharply. He is after all commenting on not just his own discipline of astrophysics, but also on the practice of science from cosmology to quantum biology and everything in between. It’s fair to say, I think, that he is not only fearful of offending his colleagues, but also of appearing a fool to a wide range of other scientists.
So instead of analysing the possible motivations of scientists by investigating their psyches, he tells rambling stories of some great names - Newton, Boltzmann, Einstein, Eddington and the like. These stories are largely anecdotal, padded with all sorts of irrelevant biographical fluff. When they are more than that, mainly in those involving astrophysics, they document not the aesthetics of those involved but the historical progress of the professional argument, sometimes equation by equation. The confrontation of research criteria with each other is never attempted. Yet this is the essential locus of what he’s meant to be investigating.
Even the anecdotal evidence is unenlightening. Newton’s self assessment of why he did what he did was because he felt “like a boy playing on the sea-shore.” This theme of play is recurrent among many scientists - Michelson and Dirac among them - but it hardly constitutes an aesthetical value. This is the equivalent of the reply of an opera-goer “Because it was cool” to the question “why did you go.” It means nothing to anyone but the speaker. The reader is left wondering what aspect of play is, as it were, in play among these scientists. Once again, no personal motivations are even speculated upon.
Regarding the disciplinary criteria of value for science, Chandrasekhar seems particularly confused at the outset. His first named criterion is epistemological: “The basic concepts of science gain their validity in proportion to the extent of the domain of natural phenomena which can be analysed in terms of them.” This seems to be a common sentiment among many scientists and philosophers of science: if it explains more it is a better theory.
But this epistemological criterion is patently an empty slogan. It all depends on the criterion of what ‘explains’ means. Whatever this criterion is, it is not going to derived from science itself. For example relativity physics and quantum physics are clearly more widely applicable than Newtonian physics. But relativity physics creates the problem of infinite density in black holes and cannot explain mass ejection from these entities. Quantum physics purports to explain the very small, yet in doing so it brings along the paradoxes of quantum entanglement and Schrodinger uncertainty. And relativity physics is inconsistent with quantum physics. So in exactly what way are relativity and quantum physics superior to Newtonian physics? Whatever the answer, it is more than simply epistemological generality.
On the other hand, Chandrasekhar, also posits an explicitly aesthetical criterion for science, one that consists in the “continual and increasing recognition of the uniformity of nature.” Other similar comments about the harmony of parts and wholes are quoted from Francis Bacon in the 16th century onwards. The difficulty of course is that this aesthetical criterion, what the Chinese call Wa, harmonious interaction, is a contrary to the epistemological criteria of explanatory scope. A quantum universe is not something harmonious by anyone’s standards. Einstein hated it as a scientific abomination. Chandrasekhar even admits in his later lectures that an element of surprise, a sort of pleasing discord, has become virtually de riguer in modern scientific theory. One scientist’s harmony seems to be another’s pedestrian triviality.
There is, finally, a difference between a professional criterion of success that is inferred from how science has progressed in the past, and one that is imposed on work done in the present. The first is a rationalisation, a very unscientific generalisation that ignores the twists and turns and dead ends of most of scientistifuc thought. The second is a considered judgment which might be applied to current work on the basis of experience. Chandrasekhar seems to be entirely oblivious to the distinction. He offers not the slightest clue to how ‘good science’ is conducted. He is unwilling to venture anything about the current criterion of success, I think, largely because it is changing all the time. There is no such criterion because the criterion shifts as fast as scientific results.
One is reminded of Lord Kelvin’s remarks to his physicist colleagues toward the 19th century. At a annual conference his announced confidently that all the fundamental problems of physics had been satisfactorily addressed. What remained were issues of ‘mopping up’ in the discipline. Within only a few years physics was rocked by Einstein and Bohr. Whatever criterion of good science Kelvin had been using, it had nothing to do with that in use a generation later. If Chandrasekhar had the insight to say something like this, he might be interesting. As it is, science emerges from his prose as somewhat tedious and boring.
I understand entirely the difficulty scientists have in detecting their own personal motivations and ingrained professional standards. It is difficult for any of us to articulate why we do what we do or what constitutes a success in doing it. Nonetheless the difficulty of the task is hardly relevant when there seems to be a growing worldwide movement of distrust and dismissal of science as merely self-aggrandising intellect.
Aestheticism is the term denoting the myopic confirmation of one’s aesthetic prejudices. It is a psychological disorder that involves projecting what one wants to be the case on to the environment at hand. Psychiatrists associate this disorder with forms of anality, the obsessive attention to irrelevant or incidental detail. By this criterion Chandrasekhar‘s presentation is scientific aestheticism. It is a sort of idealisation of what’s in his head, perhaps about why he thinks he should do astrophysics, but certainly not about why he actually does astrophysics.
Few buy the traditional claims of ‘scientific objectivity’ since such a thing is patently impossible. Scientific aestheticism has substituted for traditional religious beliefs, with about the same degree of irrationality. Idiosyncratic preferences, politics, and lucky mistakes play a much bigger role in scientific advance than, method, professional standards and raw intellect, disinterested or not. What is possible as well as necessary is that scientists, like the rest of us, come out of the aesthetical closet and get serious about who they are and why.
September 8, 2008
genius is genius.
artistic geniuses see the science in what they do. scientific geniuses see the art in what they do.
it's a novel way of looking at an old problem that makes you a visionary.
artistic geniuses see the science in what they do. scientific geniuses see the art in what they do.
it's a novel way of looking at an old problem that makes you a visionary.
April 25, 2016
These days it is difficult to see clean (devoid of the rat race of publications and multi-million dollar projects) science and technology. Let's all read this to learn to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of nature, which gives itself to the inquisitive researcher. I regret we have missed the lectures delivered by Chandrasekhar.
January 16, 2018
Read this when I was in grad school in physics and art - title grabbed me for obvious reasons. And since it was Chandra. I tried reading some of his advanced physics texts. He don't make it easy for the non-genius, unlike Feynman who tricks you into saying to yourself "Yeah, I kinda understand." (you don't).
July 19, 2016
Highly recommended to anyone interested in Science
November 4, 2023
Reflexiones sobre la belleza y la creatividad en el mundo de la ciencia. Es un libro interesante aunque no es una lectura fácil.
Me ha gustado aprender más sobre la figura de Eddington (no conocía mucho sobre él, más allá de su expedición para confirmar la teoría de la relatividad general en 1919)
Me ha gustado aprender más sobre la figura de Eddington (no conocía mucho sobre él, más allá de su expedición para confirmar la teoría de la relatividad general en 1919)
February 13, 2016
La carriera scientifica di Subrahamanyn Chandrasekhar (1910-95), astrofisico e premio Nobel per la fisica nel 1983 per i suoi contributi alla comprensione dell’evoluzione stellare, è durata più di 50 anni e gli ha consentito di riflettere a lungo, soprattutto nella fase della maturità, su che cosa significa fare scienza, sulla natura della creatività scientifica e sul tema, dibattutissimo, dell’estetica della scienza (in particolare della fisica). Questo breve saggio raccoglie quattro conferenze per un pubblico non di soli specialisti che coprono un arco di circa quarant’anni e che sono dedicati a questi temi di riflessione.
Si tratta di interventi relativamente eterogenei e diseguali. Nel primo, che è anche il più vecchio (risale al 1946), Chandrasekhar discute gli obiettivi dell’attività scientifica che identifica con la ricerca di leggi fondamentali universali e con la formulazione di spiegazioni e predizioni basate su tali leggi. Nel secondo analizza le motivazioni varie ed eterogenee che spingono certi individui a occuparsi di scienza, e sottolinea il piacere intellettuale che si ricava nell’aggiungere anche solo un piccolo mattone all’edificio del sapere umano. Nel terzo sono posti a confronto tre giganti della creatività umana - Shakespeare, Newton e Beethoven -, alla ricerca di qualche elemento comune: questo, a mio parere, è l’intervento meno interessante, perché si risolve in lunghe citazioni e in aneddoti, senza che emerga qualche riflessione di un certo peso. In effetti questo è un po’ un difetto di tutti gli interventi contenuti nel saggio: Chandrasekhar, uomo di eccezionale cultura e interessi molto ampi, ha purtroppo la tendenza a eccedere con il citazionismo, portando il lettore a perdere talvolta il filo logico del discorso.
Credo che il quarto intervento, intitolato “La bellezza e la ricerca della bellezza nella scienza” sia indubbiamente il più interessante. Come avverte Margherita Hack nella breve e intelligente introduzione al testo, il pensiero di Chandrasekhar ha subito un’evoluzione e con la maturità le sue riflessioni si sono spostate verso la storia della scienza, disciplina che gli scienziati giovani tendono a non considerare, almeno quando non la disprezzano apertamente, ritenendola inutile e “muta”. Eppure la storia della scienza può fornire molto materiale per chi, come il nostro astrofisico, si interroga su che cosa intendano matematici e fisici quando dicono che una teoria scientifica o una formula sono “belle”. In questo intervento Chandrasekhar cerca di fissare alcuni punti fermi per definire un’estetica scientifica: in particolare, una teoria è bella se presenta caratteristiche eccezionali (in un senso molto generale) suscitando meraviglia in chi la studia, e se presenta armonia tra le varie parti e il tutto. Con tali criteri le teorie relativistiche di Einstein o la teoria quantistica dell’elettrone di Dirac sono da annoverarsi tra le più belle della scienza. La bellezza è poi una sorta di via maestra per giungere alla verità. Per citare Dirac:
È più importante che le equazioni siano belle piuttosto che in accordo con gli esperimenti. […] Sembra che, se si lavora con il proposito di ottenere equazioni dotate di bellezza, e si possiede un’intuizione davvero solida, si è sicuramente sulla via del progresso. [L’evoluzione dell’immagine fisica della Natura, 1961].
Leggendo gli esempi suggeriti – da Weyl che afferma di aver sempre privilegiato nella formulazione di una teoria la bellezza all’aderenza al dato sperimentale, a Pauli, che non esclude il ricorso al pensiero non razionale nella costruzione di modelli scientifici, a Boltzmann, che descrive le emozioni estetiche (!) provate nella lettura degli articoli di Maxwell sulla dinamica dei gas – ci si convince facilmente che l’estetica ha davvero un ruolo importante, anche se non fondamentale (come ammonisce Hack nell’introduzione), nella ricerca scientifica. E belle sono anche le parole con cui Chandrasekhar racconta (p. 91) la sua meraviglia nel constatare che una particolare soluzione delle equazioni di Einstein è in grado di descrivere in modo esatto la popolazione cosmica dei buchi neri di grande massa.
Insomma, un libro piuttosto interessante e che credo possa essere letto con piacere anche dai non specialisti. Lo consiglierei molto vivamente a chi pensa che la matematica e la fisica siano soltanto pagine e pagine di aridi calcoli, ma penso che piacerebbe molto di più a chi pensa che le arti figurative e le scienze abbiano molto in comune.
Unico rammarico, e non di poco conto: per motivi che ignoro Garzanti ha tradotto solo metà del saggio originale di Chandrasekhar (in particolare le pp. 1-73, su un totale di meno di 200 pagine). A breve mi procurerò l’edizione originale, nella speranza di scoprire perché si sia deciso di dimezzarla nella versione in italiano.
Consigliato ai fisici teorici.
Sconsigliato ai fisici sperimentali.
Si tratta di interventi relativamente eterogenei e diseguali. Nel primo, che è anche il più vecchio (risale al 1946), Chandrasekhar discute gli obiettivi dell’attività scientifica che identifica con la ricerca di leggi fondamentali universali e con la formulazione di spiegazioni e predizioni basate su tali leggi. Nel secondo analizza le motivazioni varie ed eterogenee che spingono certi individui a occuparsi di scienza, e sottolinea il piacere intellettuale che si ricava nell’aggiungere anche solo un piccolo mattone all’edificio del sapere umano. Nel terzo sono posti a confronto tre giganti della creatività umana - Shakespeare, Newton e Beethoven -, alla ricerca di qualche elemento comune: questo, a mio parere, è l’intervento meno interessante, perché si risolve in lunghe citazioni e in aneddoti, senza che emerga qualche riflessione di un certo peso. In effetti questo è un po’ un difetto di tutti gli interventi contenuti nel saggio: Chandrasekhar, uomo di eccezionale cultura e interessi molto ampi, ha purtroppo la tendenza a eccedere con il citazionismo, portando il lettore a perdere talvolta il filo logico del discorso.
Credo che il quarto intervento, intitolato “La bellezza e la ricerca della bellezza nella scienza” sia indubbiamente il più interessante. Come avverte Margherita Hack nella breve e intelligente introduzione al testo, il pensiero di Chandrasekhar ha subito un’evoluzione e con la maturità le sue riflessioni si sono spostate verso la storia della scienza, disciplina che gli scienziati giovani tendono a non considerare, almeno quando non la disprezzano apertamente, ritenendola inutile e “muta”. Eppure la storia della scienza può fornire molto materiale per chi, come il nostro astrofisico, si interroga su che cosa intendano matematici e fisici quando dicono che una teoria scientifica o una formula sono “belle”. In questo intervento Chandrasekhar cerca di fissare alcuni punti fermi per definire un’estetica scientifica: in particolare, una teoria è bella se presenta caratteristiche eccezionali (in un senso molto generale) suscitando meraviglia in chi la studia, e se presenta armonia tra le varie parti e il tutto. Con tali criteri le teorie relativistiche di Einstein o la teoria quantistica dell’elettrone di Dirac sono da annoverarsi tra le più belle della scienza. La bellezza è poi una sorta di via maestra per giungere alla verità. Per citare Dirac:
È più importante che le equazioni siano belle piuttosto che in accordo con gli esperimenti. […] Sembra che, se si lavora con il proposito di ottenere equazioni dotate di bellezza, e si possiede un’intuizione davvero solida, si è sicuramente sulla via del progresso. [L’evoluzione dell’immagine fisica della Natura, 1961].
Leggendo gli esempi suggeriti – da Weyl che afferma di aver sempre privilegiato nella formulazione di una teoria la bellezza all’aderenza al dato sperimentale, a Pauli, che non esclude il ricorso al pensiero non razionale nella costruzione di modelli scientifici, a Boltzmann, che descrive le emozioni estetiche (!) provate nella lettura degli articoli di Maxwell sulla dinamica dei gas – ci si convince facilmente che l’estetica ha davvero un ruolo importante, anche se non fondamentale (come ammonisce Hack nell’introduzione), nella ricerca scientifica. E belle sono anche le parole con cui Chandrasekhar racconta (p. 91) la sua meraviglia nel constatare che una particolare soluzione delle equazioni di Einstein è in grado di descrivere in modo esatto la popolazione cosmica dei buchi neri di grande massa.
Insomma, un libro piuttosto interessante e che credo possa essere letto con piacere anche dai non specialisti. Lo consiglierei molto vivamente a chi pensa che la matematica e la fisica siano soltanto pagine e pagine di aridi calcoli, ma penso che piacerebbe molto di più a chi pensa che le arti figurative e le scienze abbiano molto in comune.
Unico rammarico, e non di poco conto: per motivi che ignoro Garzanti ha tradotto solo metà del saggio originale di Chandrasekhar (in particolare le pp. 1-73, su un totale di meno di 200 pagine). A breve mi procurerò l’edizione originale, nella speranza di scoprire perché si sia deciso di dimezzarla nella versione in italiano.
Consigliato ai fisici teorici.
Sconsigliato ai fisici sperimentali.
Want to read
February 1, 2010Mmm, fun (in that one of my alternate universes)..
July 15, 2020
Uno dei più grandi fisici del ventesimo secolo si interroga sul sorprendente ruolo della simmetria, dell'eleganza e della semplicità (in una parola: della bellezza) nella scienza. Un ruolo che si rivela tanto più importante tanto più si scava nelle fondamenta del mondo, diventando cruciale nelle teorie fisiche moderne che descrivono la struttura ultima della materia e dello spaziotempo.
April 29, 2019
A very different take on the "two cultures" than CP Snow. A short read, it brims with energy for beauty whether in the sciences or the arts. The perspective on the development of the general theory of relativity was also interesting since I haven't read many other books on the subject.
October 12, 2023
facts and real journeys of life both are different
September 8, 2020
Yes, data should come before aesthetic taste. Sure, scientific trends and artistic trends behave differently. I guess (or whatever) that it’s hard to say whether the mathematical laws of nature are in truth the perfect ideals or just the fuzzy outlines of an underlying tumult that we can’t grasp. Chandrasekhar isn’t presumptuous in these lectures; he doesn’t compromise his own legitimacy by taking a hard stand on some obscure extrapolation of physics. What he does, simply, is share how physics, to him and some famous others, means a bit more than the data. Thumbs way up
April 6, 2025
When I was in high school, I loved studying physics. High school physics was, of course, simple -- classical mechanics, basic electrodynamics, gravity, whatever -- but it was so much fun, and the puzzles that one could create even in that very limited sandbox were so beautiful. And man, I was so good at it.
Few thrills match that of time invested in wrangling with an ugly-seeming problem for it to all suddenly click, a simple model suggesting itself above all others to satisfy all requirements, hinting towards an impossibly elegant solution -- an idea almost too good to be true. You work towards it, cautiously optimistic; you're not yet sure if you've considered everything. It gets a little messy at first. And then the terms start to cancel, and your heart races, because you think you have it, you know you have it, because you can't be wrong, there's no way -- you've started to see the light, and the expression in sight is so simple. And when you reach end of the tunnel, at the final stroke of the pen, you know that you have arrived at the truth, because the journey was too beautiful for it to be anything else.
I didn't end up going into physics. For various reasons, the magic I felt diminished, and I chose a different life. A few times I have caught myself nostalgic, wondering about the alternate universe in I stayed on that path.
Anyway, all that to say, the highest compliment I can pay this book is that it made me feel about physics the way I felt towards it when I was eighteen.
Chandrasekhar is among the pantheon of the greatest astrophysicists in history. The book is simply a collection of lectures that he's given, not on the subject, but rather about the experience of doing physics. The stories of his interactions with other physicists are fantastic. But most of all read this book for his thoughts on the aesthetics of physics theory, and the emotional journeys of its brightest figures as they are engaged in unveiling the nature of reality. The title of the book is an excellent description of what this collection of lectures are about. If it draws you, read the book.
A very small number of people in history could have written this book, and and an even smaller number had an interest in exploring the aesthetics of science and the motivations and forces behind genius breakthroughs. And perhaps only one of them was also such an excellent communicator. I am grateful that he decided to share his thoughts in these lectures, and I am grateful that they were compiled into this book.
Unfortunately, it does require some understanding of undergraduate physics (basics of GR, stat mech, stellar mechanics, QM) to appreciate many of the things he talks about, as well as an interest in the history of physics. Some parts even require graduate level astrophysics, and those I could not follow, but these points are few and far between.
But if you have the prerequisites, it is a true delight.
(The lectures stand alone, and you don't need to read them all, or any in entirety. In fact there are some repeated ideas between lectures, so you should probably skip a fair bit. Some of the later lectures are not as awesome as the first few. Nonetheless, five stars.)
Few thrills match that of time invested in wrangling with an ugly-seeming problem for it to all suddenly click, a simple model suggesting itself above all others to satisfy all requirements, hinting towards an impossibly elegant solution -- an idea almost too good to be true. You work towards it, cautiously optimistic; you're not yet sure if you've considered everything. It gets a little messy at first. And then the terms start to cancel, and your heart races, because you think you have it, you know you have it, because you can't be wrong, there's no way -- you've started to see the light, and the expression in sight is so simple. And when you reach end of the tunnel, at the final stroke of the pen, you know that you have arrived at the truth, because the journey was too beautiful for it to be anything else.
I didn't end up going into physics. For various reasons, the magic I felt diminished, and I chose a different life. A few times I have caught myself nostalgic, wondering about the alternate universe in I stayed on that path.
Anyway, all that to say, the highest compliment I can pay this book is that it made me feel about physics the way I felt towards it when I was eighteen.
Chandrasekhar is among the pantheon of the greatest astrophysicists in history. The book is simply a collection of lectures that he's given, not on the subject, but rather about the experience of doing physics. The stories of his interactions with other physicists are fantastic. But most of all read this book for his thoughts on the aesthetics of physics theory, and the emotional journeys of its brightest figures as they are engaged in unveiling the nature of reality. The title of the book is an excellent description of what this collection of lectures are about. If it draws you, read the book.
A very small number of people in history could have written this book, and and an even smaller number had an interest in exploring the aesthetics of science and the motivations and forces behind genius breakthroughs. And perhaps only one of them was also such an excellent communicator. I am grateful that he decided to share his thoughts in these lectures, and I am grateful that they were compiled into this book.
Unfortunately, it does require some understanding of undergraduate physics (basics of GR, stat mech, stellar mechanics, QM) to appreciate many of the things he talks about, as well as an interest in the history of physics. Some parts even require graduate level astrophysics, and those I could not follow, but these points are few and far between.
But if you have the prerequisites, it is a true delight.
(The lectures stand alone, and you don't need to read them all, or any in entirety. In fact there are some repeated ideas between lectures, so you should probably skip a fair bit. Some of the later lectures are not as awesome as the first few. Nonetheless, five stars.)
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