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Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics
An engaging exploration of beauty in physics, with a foreword by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger Penrose
The concept of symmetry has widespread manifestations and many diverse applications―from architecture to mathematics to science. Yet, as twentieth-century physics has revealed, symmetry has a special, central role in nature, one that is occasionally and enigmatically violated. Fearful Symmetry brings the incredible discoveries of the juxtaposition of symmetry and asymmetry in contemporary physics within everyone's grasp. A. Zee, a distinguished physicist and skillful expositor, tells the exciting story of how contemporary theoretical physicists are following Einstein in their search for the beauty and simplicity of Nature. Animated by a sense of reverence and whimsy, Fearful Symmetry describes the majestic sweep and accomplishments of twentieth-century physics―one of the greatest chapters in the intellectual history of humankind.
The concept of symmetry has widespread manifestations and many diverse applications―from architecture to mathematics to science. Yet, as twentieth-century physics has revealed, symmetry has a special, central role in nature, one that is occasionally and enigmatically violated. Fearful Symmetry brings the incredible discoveries of the juxtaposition of symmetry and asymmetry in contemporary physics within everyone's grasp. A. Zee, a distinguished physicist and skillful expositor, tells the exciting story of how contemporary theoretical physicists are following Einstein in their search for the beauty and simplicity of Nature. Animated by a sense of reverence and whimsy, Fearful Symmetry describes the majestic sweep and accomplishments of twentieth-century physics―one of the greatest chapters in the intellectual history of humankind.
376 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
March 11, 2018
I have long hesitated between two and three stars for this book, but I decided to give it the lower rating.
Zee can explain complicated things in a brilliant way, but it really helps if you know what he is talking about. I have found the same with his text books. They are absolutely brilliant to read if you already know quite a bit about the subject. But if the topic is new to you, it might feel that you have been taken for a ride. For this, the book deserves three to four stars.
But what is for me totally incomprehensible is that this book, first published in 1986, is a 2016 edition of a 2007 reprint. In view of what has happened in particle physics since 1986, this book should have received a major editing. The only thing it received is an afterword copied from another book of Zee from 1989, a bland foreword from Roger Penrose, written in 2007, and a few more pages from Zee written in 2007. How can you publish a book on particle physics in 2016 that say that the Higgs boson still has to be discovered? This is not a history of science book.
Shame on you Princeton University Press for going for the quick buck on with this book.
Zee can explain complicated things in a brilliant way, but it really helps if you know what he is talking about. I have found the same with his text books. They are absolutely brilliant to read if you already know quite a bit about the subject. But if the topic is new to you, it might feel that you have been taken for a ride. For this, the book deserves three to four stars.
But what is for me totally incomprehensible is that this book, first published in 1986, is a 2016 edition of a 2007 reprint. In view of what has happened in particle physics since 1986, this book should have received a major editing. The only thing it received is an afterword copied from another book of Zee from 1989, a bland foreword from Roger Penrose, written in 2007, and a few more pages from Zee written in 2007. How can you publish a book on particle physics in 2016 that say that the Higgs boson still has to be discovered? This is not a history of science book.
Shame on you Princeton University Press for going for the quick buck on with this book.
October 8, 2024
Laymen’s particle physics with a heavy dose of arguing for intelligent design
March 18, 2019
As the title suggests, this book is about the role ideas of symmetry played in the advance of Theoretical Physics, specifically High Energy Physics. The book was first published in '86 and there is an afterword published in the '99 edition that briefly discusses the state Superstring theory research and the attitudes of the Physics community about it then.
I do not know how much a layperson would get from this, but I do like the level of conceptual simplification chosen to address various topics in the book. That is to say that it is not simplified beyond the level where it doesn't say anything meaningful. I guess a Physics undergrad would find it comfortable enough without being spoon-fed too much.
I like that the book has a theme which it closely follows for the most part. The theme being Symmetry in High energy Physics. The author, having partaken in the zeitgeist of 2nd half of 20th century, vividly evokes the almost religious hold the idea of symmetry had on the Physicists then; all of them following in the tradition of Einstein in trying to achieve the ancient Greek goal of subjugating reality to pure thought.
'Fearful Symmetry' has the admirable and rare characteristic of being focused in its theme. This I feel is lacking in most pop-science books, which have a lot of phenomena or ideas in a particular topic listed, without having any central idea unifying them.
I do not know how much a layperson would get from this, but I do like the level of conceptual simplification chosen to address various topics in the book. That is to say that it is not simplified beyond the level where it doesn't say anything meaningful. I guess a Physics undergrad would find it comfortable enough without being spoon-fed too much.
I like that the book has a theme which it closely follows for the most part. The theme being Symmetry in High energy Physics. The author, having partaken in the zeitgeist of 2nd half of 20th century, vividly evokes the almost religious hold the idea of symmetry had on the Physicists then; all of them following in the tradition of Einstein in trying to achieve the ancient Greek goal of subjugating reality to pure thought.
'Fearful Symmetry' has the admirable and rare characteristic of being focused in its theme. This I feel is lacking in most pop-science books, which have a lot of phenomena or ideas in a particular topic listed, without having any central idea unifying them.
April 7, 2011
Yes, there is another "Fearful Symmetry" (the other one I've read is by the mathematician Ian Stewart). This one with a subtitle "The search for beauty in modern physics", and written by a theoretical physicist, rather than a mathematician.
This book is a lot harder to get through, and takes more effort to read, by a large margin. I forget whether I completely finished reading it.
Recommended for those with a good constitution.
This book is a lot harder to get through, and takes more effort to read, by a large margin. I forget whether I completely finished reading it.
Recommended for those with a good constitution.
March 24, 2024
I loved the way the author keeps the reading around symmetry without going into details of some specific theories, that leaves room for us, the readers, to look for other books for more details. The physics history explained by Zee focused only in symmetry laws was astonishing and worth the reading. The only thing that I didn’t like (and the reason I didn’t give the 5 stars) is the art link or literature explanations in some paragraphs, I found them kind as distracting elements and I found no use neither relation with the storyline.
April 13, 2023
It's a pretty good insiders account of the mainline theoretical physics account as it has developed in the second half of the 20th century. Aspects remain to me very doubtful as to whether these mathematical groups and symmetries and representations correspond in any meaningful direct sense to reality. And I did not get much sense of an understanding of some issues involved here. Yes we can find a representation and presume it would not be coincidence that it applied and it would be aesthetically pleasing if reality was "designed" in this way, but for me its not enough to get beyond the same kind of Platonism which led Plato to believe in the special place of the geometric solids, and likewise Kepler.
We can find great beauty and symmetry in vast series of epicycles like Ptolemy if we so happen to believe in such accounts. Of course whatever we currently happen to believe, we will tend to impute our own sense of value and beauty onto it. Its not for me enough on which to base a rugged realist account of how things actually are, and I think some more acknowledgement needs to be made that things, such as quarks, never observed in isolation and strange action of the strong force which holds the quarks in confinement and the hard to explain way in which bosons can carry information from one particle to another, and the weird actions of creating particles out of energy, from the quantum field, all suggest that the idea they are atomistic entities in a void is fundamentally limited and wrong.
But this writer at least wants to insist that all of the standard model can all be made consistent with a form of atomism and reductionism, but I think this is a clearly misguided belief. The particles involved are more like resonance patterns or waves in the field, a kind of structural or patterned property of reality, rather than entities. But it is hard for them to accept the less power to their positions which would come from such an acknowledgement. Nevertheless, I believe it is a better and less misleading way to view the reality status of these things.
As for the string theory stuff and the cavalier use of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the anthropic principle to plug in gaps to the story of how this all could have developed, it all feels a bit ad hoc and after the fact, rather than good insightful science, and at least with the anthropic principle, the author to his credit does show some scepticism of that particular approach.
Symmetry is a great guiding principle for building models of reality, provided we always remember they are models, and don't confound them with reality itself. (Things such as the graviton, for instance, rely on background dependence, still haven't been observed and yet the author confidently pronounces of them as if they are existing things with no worries.) Never minding these kinds of qualms, the book provides a mostly honest inside account without being excessive in the claims of what theoretical physics has achieved through employing symmetry and what it can potentially achieve in the future.
We can find great beauty and symmetry in vast series of epicycles like Ptolemy if we so happen to believe in such accounts. Of course whatever we currently happen to believe, we will tend to impute our own sense of value and beauty onto it. Its not for me enough on which to base a rugged realist account of how things actually are, and I think some more acknowledgement needs to be made that things, such as quarks, never observed in isolation and strange action of the strong force which holds the quarks in confinement and the hard to explain way in which bosons can carry information from one particle to another, and the weird actions of creating particles out of energy, from the quantum field, all suggest that the idea they are atomistic entities in a void is fundamentally limited and wrong.
But this writer at least wants to insist that all of the standard model can all be made consistent with a form of atomism and reductionism, but I think this is a clearly misguided belief. The particles involved are more like resonance patterns or waves in the field, a kind of structural or patterned property of reality, rather than entities. But it is hard for them to accept the less power to their positions which would come from such an acknowledgement. Nevertheless, I believe it is a better and less misleading way to view the reality status of these things.
As for the string theory stuff and the cavalier use of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the anthropic principle to plug in gaps to the story of how this all could have developed, it all feels a bit ad hoc and after the fact, rather than good insightful science, and at least with the anthropic principle, the author to his credit does show some scepticism of that particular approach.
Symmetry is a great guiding principle for building models of reality, provided we always remember they are models, and don't confound them with reality itself. (Things such as the graviton, for instance, rely on background dependence, still haven't been observed and yet the author confidently pronounces of them as if they are existing things with no worries.) Never minding these kinds of qualms, the book provides a mostly honest inside account without being excessive in the claims of what theoretical physics has achieved through employing symmetry and what it can potentially achieve in the future.
March 25, 2022
Even if it's a little old (not ideal for a book about cutting edge "modern" physics), the content remains fascinating. This book made me want to take classes in group theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum field theory. It's a really nice exploration of some of the beauty in physics.
August 17, 2017
Really tough to get my mind around. But after reading it about three times, I think I got most of it.
August 25, 2019
Not the most recent physics for the masses book, but A Zee is so much fun to read.
February 28, 2020
Similar problem to Wilczek, except this guy doesn’t have a Nobel Prize.
August 23, 2020
Good overview of fundamental physics.
March 5, 2022
A little dated, but very readable.
December 28, 2016
A great topic for a popular science book, but poorly executed. Concepts of symmetry are one of the great "deep" ideas in modern physics and, one would think, ripe for a clever, polymathic popular treatment drawing in art, culture, music and more -- a lá Godel, Escher, Bach. Sadly, this discussion is fairly disorganized, rambling and only intermittently insightful. In other words, fearfully unsymmetrical.
To his credit, Zee does hit the right topics, and ranges further afield than many popular physics books (Yang-Mills, gauge symmetry, electroweak unification, etc). I was also somewhat miffed that his discussion of Emmy Noether wasn't more extensive. She deserves to be way more famous than she is.
To his credit, Zee does hit the right topics, and ranges further afield than many popular physics books (Yang-Mills, gauge symmetry, electroweak unification, etc). I was also somewhat miffed that his discussion of Emmy Noether wasn't more extensive. She deserves to be way more famous than she is.
June 9, 2012
The approach in this book to the project of contemporary physics is from a different angles than most books that start with something like trying to explain string theory. Zee argues that theoretical physics is concerned with applying and finding symmetries in nature that simplify what we already know, reduce what appears to be a zoo of unrelated things into unities. An obvious example is the zoo of mesons and baryons and all their properties being ultimately understood in terms of the combinations of 9 different quarks. Zee introduces a little about group theory to explain the Standard Model, and touches on Noether's theorem to talk about conservation laws.
June 5, 2008
Was way better than "Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics" by A Zee.
Merged review:
Discovered that at every turn the author has high expectations that the reader has a solid foundation in physical science. Expanded my thinking on many fronts. Enjoyed.
Merged review:
Discovered that at every turn the author has high expectations that the reader has a solid foundation in physical science. Expanded my thinking on many fronts. Enjoyed.
September 4, 2008
oh, maybe it suffers by comparison with the Omnes book i read right after it. but way too many cutsie analogies with cartoon illustrations (of the analogy, not the concept), whimsical name-dropping anecdotes, and (serious) mentions of God.
October 8, 2014
In what is one of the best popular physic books I have ever read, Zee explores the role that symmetry has played in physics, mainly since Einstein, but with occasional dips further into the past.
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May 1, 2009Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics by A. Zee (1986)
February 17, 2020
Readable and rollicking, as popular physics goes; it lacks Hawkingesque pizzazz, but it's perfectly serviceable.
August 25, 2008
I have an earlier version of this but it is a very fine read. I really enjoyed it.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews