Conjuring the Universe: The Origins of the Laws of Nature

by Peter Atkins

The marvellous complexity of the Universe emerges from several deep laws and a handful of fundamental constants that fix its shape, scale, and destiny. There is a deep structure to the world which at the same time is simple, elegant, and beautiful. Where did these laws and these constants come from? And why are the laws so fruitful when written in the language of mathematics?

Peter Atkins considers the minimum effort needed to equip the Universe with its laws and its constants. He explores the origin of the conservation of energy, of electromagnetism, of classical and quantum mechanics, and of thermodynamics, showing how all these laws spring from deep symmetries. The revolutionary result is a short but immensely rich weaving together of the fundamental ideas of physics. With his characteristic wit, erudition, and economy, Atkins sketches out how the laws of Nature can spring from very little. Or arguably from nothing at all.

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction, Chemistry, Philosophy, Audiobook, History Of Science

198 pages, Hardcover

Published May 22, 2018

About the author

Peter William Atkins is an English chemist and a Fellow of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford. He retired in 2007. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Quantum Mechanics. Atkins is also the author of a number of popular science books, including Atkins' Molecules, Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science and On Being.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Brian Clegg · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare that I'd use the term 'tour de force' when describing a popular science book, but it sprang to mind when I read Conjuring the Universe. It's not that the book's without flaws, but it does something truly original in a delightful way. What's more, the very British Peter Atkins hasn't fallen into the trap that particularly seems to influence US scientists when writing science books for the public of assuming that more is better. Instead of being an unwieldy brick of a book, this is a compact 168 pages that delivers splendidly on the question of where the natural laws came from.

The most obvious comparison is Richard Feynman's (equally compact) The Character of Physical Law - but despite being a great fan of Feynman's, this is the better book. Atkins begins by envisaging a universe emerging from absolutely nothing. While admitting he can't explain how that happened, his newly created universe still bears many resemblances to nothing at all - it's empty as yet. And from that, he conjures up conservation laws using Noether's theorem, then goes on to show how other laws emerge from indolence - more technically the principles of least time and least action - and anarchy. As a final gesture, Atkins throws in the insights that even some of the constants of nature, such as the speed of light and Planck's constant don't really exist, being artefacts of the units we choose to use.

Underlying all this is mathematics, which Atkins tucks away into his notes, so that the main text puts the message across with hardly an equation in sight. What we get the strong feeling for is that it really doesn't take much for the physical laws we observe to become necessary. They aren't something complex that is imposed on us, but rather the inevitable consequence of very few simple starting points.

I mentioned there are flaws. The history of science is sometimes a little weak. We're told Aristotle should have noticed that arrows would fly better in a vacuum - he did, prefiguring Newton's first law, effectively using it as an argument as to why he thought nature abhors a vacuum. Similarly we are told that Daniel Fahrenheit 'puzzlingly' took 96 as body temperature, not 100. But we know why - it was to make it easy to draw a scale between 32 and 96, as the difference of 64 can easily be constructed by repeatedly halving the distance between the two points. (Not a great reason, admittedly, unless you're manufacturing thermometers.) The book is certainly not all bad in this respect, though - we get more about Boltzmann and his work than most popular science titles provide.

The 'conjuring' metaphor also seemed particularly apt as I found Atkins' slick, mellifluous tone reminiscent of a stage magician's patter. It may leave the reader wondering what Atkins was keeping up his sleeve. There were a couple of examples where sleight of hand appeared to happen. The emergence of some of the natural laws still requires Noether's theorem and the principle of least action/time to hold... and where did they come from in a true state of nothing whatsoever? Also, the example using Noether's theorem takes us from nothing (where symmetry is inevitable) to empty space, where that symmetry remains - which then implies various conservation laws. But we got no feel for what happens when stuff begins to emerge. As the first particles come into being, why doesn't symmetry (and the conservation laws with it) go out of the window? Atkins' magical mystery tour makes it easy to miss the questions left unanswered.

A few diagrams would have helped too - there are none at all. For example, at one point Atkins is talking about gauge invariance, and says 'Now think of shifting the whole wave along a bit, so that its peaks and troughs are moved a little. Nothing observable has changed, in the sense that if you were to evaluate the probability of finding the particle at any point, then you would find the same result.' Without a diagram, there are two problems. Firstly, how is the wave shifted? Moved in which direction with respect to the direction of travel? Secondly the wave in question is the square of the plot of Schrödinger's equation - it shows the probability of finding a quantum particle in a location. So how is it possible to move the wave - so the probabilities are higher in different locations from before the move - yet nothing has changed? An illustration might have clarified things.

Inevitably a degree of magic work was necessary, though, to achieve so much without deploying the mathematics that underlies what we were being told. And in this book, Atkins proves himself a master magician.

[Jose Moa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a honest, rather original popular science book.

It is honest in the sense that it is not a fancy phisics book,all physics here is widely tested and widely accepted,it dont claims to have the ultimate source of the physical laws,for now it belongs to the realm of metaphysics.

It is original because it exposes the thesis that in the creation of the physical reality almost nothing has happened and the physical laws are based in almost nothing.

The absolute nothingness is absolutely homogeneus,isotropic and invariant, but the universe and the fundamental physical laws also have the same basic properties,are invariants under translations,rotations,time shifts or more generally under Lorentz transformations,by mean of Noether theorem this invariances cause conserved quantities as linear and angular momentum and energy,the local invariance generates the gauge invariance(gauge field theory ) and conserved quantities as for example the electric charge.

But in words of the author, not only almost nothing has happened in the creation if not that, aside the universe is lazy ,has the property of laziness,this property is clearly seen in the minimunaction principles as for example the minimal action principle or the Fermats principle,from this principles one can build the quantum mechanics (Feynmann path integral formulation) or the geometrical optics.

Being the author a physical chemist he is strong on thermodynamics and the book is also a excelent introduction to the origins and explanation of thermodynamics laws,for example clearly explains that yet being the laws of mechanics time reversibles ,when many particles are involved naturally appears irreversibility and the concept of entropy.

The book also makes a disgression on the meaning of the fundamental physical constants,in textual words:

"To my mind there are two classes of physical constants:those that dont exist and those that do.The former are essentially a consecuence of mankind making(for instance lenght in meters ,time in seconds).The latter,the constants that really do exist in a fundamental way,and thus which are truly fundamental constants,are coupling constants that sumarize the strenght of the interaction between entities such as the strenghtof the interaction between electric charges."

The former constants are c,h,k that with a suitable choice of units can take all the 1 value and dissapear of the equations.

The last chapter of the book is for me some controversial,he in some way takes the idea of the possibility that the universe has a matemathical deep structure given the unreasonable effectiviness of mathematics(lecture of Eugene Wigner in 1959).
He put two facts :
The numbers,and from the numbers one can build the mathematics edifice as have said Leopold Kronecker,can be build from the nothingness,the empty set,by a series of nestings.

Second :Textual:"once you have got arithmetic you have got a lot of stuff,because there is a celebrated theorem due to the german Leopold Lowenheim and the norwegian Thoralf Skolem which implies that any axiomatic system is equivalent to arithmetic.So for instance, if you have a theory encompassing all the laws of nature that is based on a set of assertions (axioms),thenit is logically equivalent to arithmetic,and any statements about arithmetic apply too.A wild speculation might therefore be that logical relations akin to those proposed in Peanos Axioms of arithmetic were stumbled into and gave stability to the entity that emerged from nothing and which we call the universe."

Of course the book deepens in all this and in my opinion is a very recomendable, original contribution to all people interested in the foundations of the physical reality.

As a bonus the book has a excelent rather technical appendix where between other things it makes a simple but riguros demostration of the Noethers theorem.

Peter Atkins also has a book "The laws of Thermodynamics" in the Oxfords very Short Introductions.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

TL;DR

Excellent technical yet readable book that adds to the case for nothing being the beginning.

Disclosure

Oxford University Press provided an advanced electronic copy in exchange for an honest review. Review cross-posted at my website: PrimmLife

Review

Why do the laws of physics exist? Our universe is not a place of chaos and lawlessness. It and everything within it follow strict rules that shape the universe into a place where we can exist. For some, this indicates a creator, who set everything in motion for us. For other like Peter Atkins, there has to be a non-mystical reason for the existence of the rules. In Conjuring the Universe, Dr. Atkins sets forth a convincing argument about how the laws of physics exist that is compliant with a universe springing from nothing. For example, if nothing is the starting point of our universe, how does conservation of energy exist? This is just one of the questions that Dr. Atkins discusses in this excellent book.

In Conjuring the Universe, the laws of physics are discussed in terms of what they mean rather than mathematical equations. Even though I've studied physics and read a lot about the subject, I still appreciated Dr. Atkins explanations. They are more important than the equations because if you don't know what they mean, you're just sticking numbers into a process to get an answer. In order to know if the numbers are correct, you have to know what the equations represent. Dr. Atkins explains physical concepts in clear, understandable sentences and analogies. If you want the equations, he includes them in the back of the book. In my advanced reading copy (ARC), the notes at the end of the book weren't typeset correctly, and that section caused my iPad trouble. So, I didn't read the notes and cannot comment on their depth.

The writing style is very British, which I appreciated. It felt dry at first, but as I got accustomed to it, I enjoyed it more and more. It is technical, which means that rereading a sentence, paragraph, or even page will be required. This is a text which demands close reading, and I recommend having a dictionary and/or access to Wikipedia to clarify and supplement it. But if you're curious about physics, Conjuring the Universe is not over your head. It is not too academic. It requires work but is accessible, and it rewards us with an interesting perspective on the laws of physics. Anyone with at least a high school education can learn something from this book.

Conjuring the Universe is an excellent study in how to write a novel to build an argument. Each chapter has an objective and generally achieves it by the end. The next chapter then builds or uses the momentum of the previous to achieve its goals. I loved the way this is structured; it fit a concise logical blueprint that was pleasing to me. If I were to write a nonfiction book, I'd study these chapters to learn how Dr. Atkins did it.

While it is an excellent supporting text, if I had to name one book as making the case for our universe springing forth from nothing, it wouldn't be this book. It's not trying to prove that nothing was the initial state; it just shows how what we know could come from that initial state. In other words, the starting assumption of the book is that nothing is the initial state, but nothing in the book confirms that assumption as correct. I would recommend Conjuring the Universe to anyone who enjoyed Krauss's A Universe from Nothing. It makes Krauss's argument much stronger and should be used as evidence that something from nothing is possible.

Most of the arguments worked for me. Chapter 8, I struggled. In this section, Dr. Atkins argues that some fundamental constants do not actually exist. He says they are human invention. In part, I understand what he's trying to say, but I find it more a mathematical trick than a convincing argument. In order for this argument to work, we have to redefine units of measurement that humans have used for centuries. The numbers in front of the unit make no sense in terms of what we've all used to measure all our lives. This lost me because it departs with common sense in some ways. The underlying mathematical arguments are sound, but they are built on a philosophical ground. If early humans had known about the speed of light or the concept of absolute zero, maybe our system of measurements would be such that we don't need these conversion constants. But that is not the reality we live in. So, the argument is excellent that some fundamental constants do not exist. But so what? We still have to use them in the world we've built.

Despite bouncing off Chapter 8, Conjuring the Universe hooked me and taught me a lot. It is excellently written and supports the argument for nothing. Its explanation of physics enlightens and expands my appreciation of our universe. In the highlighted quote above, it contains one of the best definitions of the scientific method I've read. One success means more investigation; whereas one failure means failure. This is what it means to be a scientist, and Dr. Atkins has captured that essence beautifully. His ability to translate the laws of physics into understandable concepts makes this book readable and a good addition to any library of science.

Score: 7.5/10

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned that our universe is an indolent, anarchic place that retains something of the flavor of the big Nothing that existed before the big bang. In fact, Atkins says that not much really happened in the big bang; maybe nothing at all happened. All very interesting but I got lost along the way and found much of this beyond the capacity of my brain. I've also learned to be thankful that the universal constants and forces are what they are or else there would be no chemistry -- no molecules -- and thus no us, rocks, trees, planets, cats, evolution, etc.

[Cav · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this one.
Conjuring the Universe is the kind of book I don't well at all with; long-winded, esoteric, dry and arduous...
Others here seemed to like it, but I did not.
A book needs to have effective communication to be good (in my humble opinion), and this book did not meet that standard for me. I found my attention wandering many times while reading this...
Thankfully, it was only 208 pages, or I would have put it down.
2 stars.

[Natasha Hurley-Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with reading a popular science book as a scientist is that every single point would be much more easily and succinctly expressed with an equation, a diagram, or both. Mathematical hypotheses can be tested by accumulating data and seeing whether they match. I'd go so far as to say there is no scientific method without mathematics. So trying to read a book which "explains" all of physics without a single equation or diagram is like a slow form of torture.

Every few weeks I receive email from enthusiastic "amateur physicists" (known to some of my colleagues as "annoying spammers") who enclose their particular "theory". Without fail, these are written as long, passionate prose screeds, with perhaps the occasional diagram lacking all understanding of geometry, or graphs without units, errors, or meaning. Sometimes the target of the writing is a concept like redshift and how we astronomers have got it all wrong, sometimes it contains an outlandish claim, like we're surrounded by SPACE MIRRORS, sometimes it includes a well-intentioned plan to build a warp engine. But without mathematics, without testable hypotheses written in the language of the Universe, these expansive tracts of words are fundamentally meaningless. They cannot be tested, they cannot be built, they cannot be experimented on.

And that, unfortunately, is how I felt while reading Conjuring: if I were not a physicist and didn't already know* how the Universe works, I see no way of distinguishing between this book's handwaving and that of my unwelcome correspondents'.

*have a good self-consistent model that works with the available data and makes testable predictions, many of which are performed every single day by the operation of the immense amount of science-based engineering that surrounds us and enables our current mode of living.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

The style makes the read a slog with its petulant boasting, it's downright childish in its attempts at jaded humour. I'm sure the author would call it acerbic wit. I call it embarrassing for an academic. Do you want to teach me something or do you want to prove you're clever?

[Baroness · Rating 1 out of 5]

While listening to the book my ears screamed. Seriously bro, get to the point. I don’t like wordy books.
DNF.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is ok. I would have liked a more rigorous and thorough treatment but it is a short pop-science book on Astronomy-cosmology. It is ok but being a Physics major in college I could use a deeper dive. Might be fun for a lay reader though.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Atkins is an atheist of the Richard Dawkins tendency, and this is a book with an agenda. Atkins is seeking to show that there is not much beyond what he calls indolence and anarchy to the laws of nature. The unwritten implication of this is that they emerge from next to nothing. Does he succeed in this? Only partially.

The prize exhibit is Noether's theorem, which he explains simply and well (though curiously, he omits to say that it depends on the principle of least action, despite spending some time with it later in the book). He spends a lot of time - maybe too much - on thermodynamics and its emergence from statistical mechanics and it's well explained. However, elsewhere some of his metaphors are more likely to puzzle than enlighten.

He shows how the principle of least action can be derived from Schrodinger's wave expression of quantum mechanics but it's not quite clear that this "explains" least action. Of course, the two must be consistent and they are rather marvellously alternative formulations (https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.e...) but how could they not be? Prioritising Schrodinger's formulation implies an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the waves are "real" such as de Broglie/Bohm pilot waves and it's not clear that this is what Atkins intends. And is the Schrodinger equation really simpler and more obvious?

Where things really go wrong, though is a section on fundamental constants. Atkins rightly points out that many constants (c, G, h) have dimensions, so can be set to 1. Of course, you can do this but you then end up (as he does not point out) with Planck units, which for time and distance are incredibly small, even by the standards of atomic nuclei. Neither can you then express energy in seconds as he wants to - this ignores the fact that the constants have dimensions, which was what he relied on in the first place. This whole section becomes increasingly eccentric as it progresses.

But the chief failing of the book is that it rarely confronts the very many areas in which physics can't simply be reduced to the obvious. It has to deal with dimensionless constants but ignores the Standard Model, which without supersymmetry is now looking more awkward than ever. Of course, these problems may one day be resolved - that's the whole goal of science - but at present, we can't get close to a universe where as Atkins likes to say "at the creation, very little happened".

Atkins's style is dryly humorous. It's impossible not to smile from time to time, which is an unusual pleasure in a book of this kind. However, some readers are likely to find it a little heavy in places and at times, verging on the smug.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

In the beginning there was nothing. That’s the whole point of the book. Atkins posited that thanks to the law of conservation in momentum, electrical charges etc, in the beginning (very very beginning) there must have been nothing at all. Then everything came to be.

Throughout the whole book, I felt he tried to describe different laws of physics, from the fact that classical laws of physics about speed, diffraction, energy etc were all approximations of fundamental laws of nature that works only under certain conditions: such as Hooke’s law about springs: stretch the spring too much and the law doesn’t apply. Unfortunately I don’t think he contributed much to the point of the book, and I felt somewhat cheated that he didn’t really explain the ‘conjuring’ of the universe well at all.

[Science and Fiction · Rating 4 out of 5]

Speculating on what happened before the Big Bang may be intriguing but ultimately remains unknowable. Richard Feynman and Lawrence Krauss have written about this, and in interviews over the years others have also weighed in on the subject. At least Atkins doesn’t defer the question of infinite regression, as have Sean Carroll and Sir Roger Penrose (cyclic universe) and instead talks about a primordial Ur-Universe of complete Nothingness. No random quantum fluctuations, nothing. “The law of the conservation of energy is at the heart of the understandability of the universe in the sense that it lies at the root of causality, that one event can cause another, and therefore lies at the heart of all explanation.”

From this Atkins also seems to derive a humorous pleasure in dividing the laws of nature into various ranks and cast of characters that include in-laws and outlaws. But his answer to the Ur-Universe question is based on mathematical symmetry, specifically Noether’s Theorem. Atkins posits that Nothingness simply rolled over (or, in its infinite slumber, burped us into existence) and our known and observable universe was set into being. Atkins does provide some interesting thoughts on how the blueprint of nothingness has left an imprint on our universe.

Along the meandering journey of this book, which never fully answers the promise of conjuring the universe, Atkins talks about a lot of interesting things. I especially liked the section on wave optics. None of this was really new material for me but reading about topics told from different perspectives always seems to deepen my understanding, so I welcome that.

The main reason for the downgrade is the writing style itself, which I oftentimes found exasperating. Atkins has a circuitous and easily distracted writing style that draws to mind a more highbrow version of Professor Irwin Corey. But I’m not laughing. If I read a promising sentence at the top of a page and keep reading in anticipation of an answer, by the bottom of the page there is still no answer: “We’ll get to that later . . . but first let’s consider this . . . but let’s set that aside for a moment . . .” Get to the point man!

I’m sure there are nuggets of wisdom in Atkins other books, but based on my impatience with how he writes I doubt I’ll be exploring anything else from this author. 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

[Osas Osazee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Peter Atkins' book "Conjuring the Universe" presents an interesting and ambitious attempt to explain the origins of the universe and the fundamental laws that govern it. However, as a scientist and critic, I must point out several flaws and limitations in Atkins' approach.

Firstly, the book suffers from a lack of clarity in its language and presentation. Although Atkins is a renowned chemist and science writer, his explanations of complex scientific concepts can be convoluted and difficult to follow for readers without a strong background in physics and mathematics. The use of technical jargon and unfamiliar terminology can be intimidating for non-experts, and may deter them from engaging with the book's central ideas.

Additionally, Atkins' arguments often rely on oversimplifications and generalizations, which can lead to inaccuracies and misunderstandings. For example, his description of the laws of thermodynamics as "inevitable and universal" fails to acknowledge the many exceptions and caveats that exist in the application of these laws to real-world systems. Similarly, his assertion that the universe is "deterministic" overlooks the role of quantum mechanics in introducing uncertainty and randomness into physical processes.

Furthermore, Atkins' approach to the question of the universe's origins is limited by his adherence to a strictly materialistic and reductionist worldview. While it is certainly important to ground scientific explanations in empirical evidence and logical reasoning, the rejection of non-materialistic explanations and the dismissal of philosophical and metaphysical inquiry can be seen as dogmatic and narrow-minded.

Overall, while "Conjuring the Universe" presents a fascinating and thought-provoking exploration of some of the most fundamental questions in science and philosophy, its limitations and shortcomings must be acknowledged. As a critic, I would encourage readers to approach the book with a critical and discerning eye, and to supplement their understanding with a broad range of perspectives and sources.

[Bryant E]

I enjoyed this book a lot, well written hard science from a good author who understands the subject and can express it well enough for a (admittedly nerdy) non scientist to follow. Well formed concepts with strong scaffolding to support each step into the deeper science. Some of the conclusions in the end of the book felt a bit forced / less supported, but even those were handled well and I understood where the author was going with his through line.
I will be looking for more books from this author.
I have 1 and only 1 negative about this book and even it was not a deal breaker.
I listened to this as audio book and I personally found the voice of the narrator whiny. I do not know if it was the author or not, I did not check, but, I was off put but the voice used for this book. Not enough to DNF the book and I am glad, because I really liked the book, just enough to warn others about it.

[Karel Baloun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Explaining the universe from very simple every day ideas like Nothing, indolence, and anarchy, is a meaningful achievement. And I appreciate how he weaves compelling stories of important historical figures into the narrative, a few of which even I had never heard before.

Unfortunately the text reads like a long one-sided conversation, with many long meandering sentences and unnecessary parentheticals.

Fortunately, just the idea of reporting mass in a unitless *cycles per second*, where I weigh ~9.5×10^51 Hertz, (p142-3) is pretty mindbending and worth the cost of admission. As is his idea of reporting temperature in Joules, on a inverted scales with higher temps being lower numbers (p148), or even in units of time (p151). I would need to reread this a lot more carefully to really understand, and in this case I’ll blame myself, not Atkin’s prose style.

[عبد الله القصير · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب جيد عن أهم القوانين التي تحكم الكون، المؤلف يرى أنه خلال الإنفجار العظيم لم يحصل شيء ذا بال أو لم يحصل أي شيء على الإطلاق. ولإنه لم يحصل أي شيء فالقوانين التي اكتشفناها إنما هي نتائج منطقية لهذا اللاشيء الذي حصل. فقانون حفظ الطاقة وقانون الشحنة الكهربائية هما مثالان لهذا اللاشيء. هذه القوانين ليست معقدة بحيث أننا نحتاج شخص ما يفرضها على الكون ولكنها نتيجة طبيعية وبسيطة ومباشرة لهذه البداية. فقانون الشحنة الكهربائية مع كل تعقيداته إلى أنه يرجع إلى أن الكون ككل لا يملك شحنة فمن هذا الكون عديم الشحنة خرج لنا هذه الشحنات الموجبة والسالبة.
طبعا في الكتاب واضح توجه المؤلف وهو هذا التعقيد الموجود بالكون لا يستدعي وجود إله خالق له ولكنه عبارة عن مجموعة من القوانين البسيطة التي خرجت لنا من لا شيء!
هذا التوجه للمؤلف هو الذي أعطى الكتاب لمسة فلسفية جعلتني لا أفهم بعض تحليلاته التي يقول عنها منطقية ولو شرح الكون بلا هذا التوجه لكن أسهل علي فهم ما يكتب.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book feels very, very disjoint - I'm still not exactly sure what the point of this book was. It began with a discussion of trying to refute ideas of the Big Bang (I think? The author never really explains what he means by a boring beginning to the universe), moves on to unifying some of the physical laws of the universe, moves into a long Old Man Yells at Cloud series about why our measurements are all silly, and finally ends with a great part about mathematics and consciousness. The end is great - the rest I could have taken or given.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some original ideas here on the origins of the laws of nature. Atkins has extrapolated based on our understanding of what we know about these laws, with one or two (well-grounded) assumptions. It is thought-provoking, and should stimulate others to offer alternative explanations and/or devise some methods of testing his hypotheses. This is how science is done. It starts with hypotheses about how something works, which is what Atkins has done here.

[Jason Osorio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atkins sugiere que el universo y sus leyes pueden existir sin una causa trascendental, confiando en que las matemáticas pueden "crear [“conjurar”]" la realidad. Sin embargo, este enfoque deja un vacío importante: las matemáticas explican cómo funciona el universo, pero no por qué existe ni por qué tiene orden. Me agrada la forma en la que John Lennox aborda esto en “Gunning God”: "las leyes que descubrimos son señales de un creador”.

[Roberto Rigolin F Lopes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atkins starts with the hypothesis that the universe started from nothing but the laws of nature emerge from anarchy and our ignorance has been producing knowledge. Outrageous! This guy is provoking us to think. Look again at the title. What the heck is “conjuring”? Yes, you are about to learn some new words here. But his fancy vocabulary matches very well with his wit. As a result, the whole thing is very entertaining. Work of a masterful teacher connecting ideas together in a few sentences. Here goes my favorite: “I have used space to discuss time; now I shall use time to discuss space”. Nature is thrilling by default, but Atkins highlights the most intriguing bits in a highly original presentation. Get ready to see anarchy at its best.

[Ronald McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite thought-provoking book. It seems to start out like a cliche science explanatory book, but slowly moves into the idea that order comes out of chaos. It’s a really interesting viewpoint and well argued. Well worth visiting…

[Andres Gomez-Lievano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's not that I learned more physics; it's that it taught me to look at the whole edifice from another angle. I also loved that the notes at the end had very concise equations for those of us interested in going beyond the words.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really delightful and inspiring scientific narrative.

[Dr Nouman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Books tell through physics point of view that nothing much has happened since the Big Bang. Thought provoking

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The origins of the laws of nature can be thought to be created by the three principles of: indolence, anarchy and ignorance. The existence of any law of conservation implies an underlying symmetry. The conservation of energy is a symmetrical consequence of absolute time.

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many of Peter Atkins books and his writing is clear and informative. I found more elaboration of his writing on physical sciences esp. chemistry and thermodynamics. One chapter on reducing the necessary cosmological constants of the Universe was of special interest to me. I wished it had been more central to the book and with greater elaboration. Over all, an interesting and informative science book.

I've reread this book and want to call out the key chapter 8 (Measurement for measurement) where Atkins (in brilliant form) should us that reducing/eliminating constants is largely perspective once relationships to the physical world are established ... and proceeds to eliminate c, h, joules, an Q (electric charge) by converting them all to sec^-1. And in doing this explains much about our world.

I hope to read many more of Peter's books in the near future.