Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From?

by Victor J. Stenger

For those fascinated by how physics explains the universe and affects philosophy, this in-depth presentation of the cosmos, complete with an appendix of mathematical formulas, makes accessible to lay readers findings normally available only to professional scientists. In a series of remarkable developments in the 20th century and continuing into the 21st, elementary particle physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists have removed much of the mystery that surrounds our understanding of the physical universe. We now have mathematical models that are consistent with all observational data, including measurements of incredible precision, and we have a good understanding of why those models take the form they do. But the question arises: Where do the "laws" revealed by the mathematical models come from? Some conjecture that they represent a set of restraints on the behavior of matter that are built into the structure of the universe, either by God or some other ubiquitous governing principle. In this challenging, stimulating discussion of physics and its implications, the author disputes this notion. Instead, he argues that physical laws are simply restrictions on the ways physicists may draw the models they use to represent the behavior of matter if they wish to do so objectively. Since mathematical descriptions of data must be independent of any specific point of view, that is, they must possess "point-of-view invariance" (maximum objectivity), they naturally conform to certain fundamental laws that insure that objectivity, such as the great conservation principles of energy and momentum. The laws of physics, however, are not simply an arbitrary set of rules since the observed data beautifully demonstrate their accuracy.

Genres: Science, Physics, Philosophy, Nonfiction

340 pages, Hardcover

First published July 5, 2006

About the author

Victor John Stenger was an American particle physicist, outspoken atheist and author, active in philosophy and popular religious skepticism.

He published 13 books for general audiences on physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, philosophy, religion, atheism, and pseudoscience. He popularized the phrase "Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings".

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Stegner's most advanced book for readers of "popular" science. In many such books, the tension between the absolute need to use mathematics to explain the science and the powerful editorial command to exclude all such math is embarrassingly obvious, and makes many otherwise admirable books essentially unreadable, full of too much vague prose. Going against this trend (isn't this always the right thing to do?), Stegner provides both a readable narrative, and the necessary advanced math. Presented in two sections, the first half is the narrative, the second half is the same "story" re-told using math at the full-scale undergraduate physics level.

Like the famous physicist Richard Feynman, Stegner often looked at the world differently than most, with a simplifying perspective that cut away the obscuring nonsense to expose a clear understanding. In this book, his goal is to derive all the fundamental laws of physics from one simple principle: point-of-view invariance (aka gauge invariance). He puts it this way:

What has been attempted here is to show that the laws of physics do not follow from very unique or very surprising physical properties of the Universe. Rather they arise from the very simple notion that whatever mathematics you write down to describe measurements, your equations cannot depend on the origin or direction of the coordinate systems you define in the space of those measurements or the space of the functions used to describe those laws. That is, they cannot reflect any privileged point of view. Except for the complexities that result from spontaneously broken symmetries, the laws of physics may be the way they are because they cannot be any other way.

From this, in a mathematical tour de force, he constructs space-time itself, then Newtons laws, Galileo and Einstein relativity, the Standard Model with its particles, forces, and their ranges, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, cosmology, and the physics of the void. Quite a nice bit of work in 173 pages of narrative and 115 of textbook math.

There's nothing new here that any physics student wouldn't know already, but what a wonderful, concise exposition of the totality of reality by the late, great, Victor Stegner!

[Barry Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those somewhat rare popular science books that contains some math (like Penrose. The Road to Reality or Einstein. Relativity both excellent too). The more math and physics you are already familiar with, the more you will get out of this book because the rigorous developments (especially in the appendix) involve calculus level math. This might sound incredible, but Stenger actually manages to cover all the math and physics you need to understand the basic ideas that comprise our current model of the universe (The Standard Model). Another Stenger book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, is similar to this one in style.

[Voyt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Succinct overview but title is misleading.
POSTED BY ME AT AMAZON 2007
This is quite a nifty, compendium like summary of currently accepted laws pertaining to cosmology/particle physics (I refer here to author's clear and mellifluous writing). If you read his previous books ("Timeless Reality" and "Has Science Found God" in particular) be aware of repetitions. Be alerted as well: this book is neither a typical popular science nor text book. Mathematical supplements take 130 pages out of the total 320 pages!! These math offals/short-cuts are often indigestible even for people familiar with vector calculus. I always have a problem with such books (Penrose's "The Road to Reality" being even more apparent example); whom these books are targeted for - students, scientists or average (though educated) laymen? Another problem with this book - author states with respect to the title: "..the laws of physics are the way they are because they have been defined to be that way (?!).....The viewpoint I present will be that of a strict empiricist who knows of no way to obtain knowledge of the world other than by OBSERVATION and experimentation". This is an honest statement that answers only partially the title's question "Where.. from?". His principle of "Point of View Invariance" and time symmetry at subatomic level are quite interesting if not compelling, however do not hope to become totally enlightened after reading "The Comprehensible Cosmos". Victor Stenger is skeptical about strings' Multiverse and possibly eternal or fine tuned Universe - this is understandable. However he writes about the Universe as if almost everything about it would have been well defined and concluded. Author simply does not realize, that for every discovery in cosmology/particle physics, there are three times more new questions and unknowns that have to be further investigated.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amazone

Most irritating was the author's tendency to open a particular cans of worms, then point out their relevance, and explain briefly why he wasn't going to get into these issues in his book.

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Author simply does not realize, that for every discovery in cosmology/particle physics, there are three times as many new questions and unknowns that have to be further investigated.