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The Matter Myth: Dramatic Discoveries That Challenge Our Understanding of Physical Reality
by Paul Davies, John Gribbin
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (1992-01-15)
ISBN: 0671728415
EAN: 9780671728410
Dewy Decimal #: 530
Paperback: 320 pages
SKU: 07060360
Condition: Very Good As issued
Comments: Paperback. Very good condition with no markings and no creases to spine or cover. Some tanning and very slight wear to cover. Near fine copy.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Two highly acclaimed science writers--authors (separately) of God and the New Physics and In Search of Shrodinger's Cat--explain the latest breakthroughs in scientific thought, revolutionizing our concept of the universe and our place within it. Line drawings throughout.
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Customer Reviews
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Update needed!
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-05-16
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I agree with the majority of reviewers that this is an excellent book, making some very difficult concepts understandable to the layman. The book was published in 1992, and I bought the October 2007 edition. It is a pity that so much data in the book are outdated: Dark matter is hardly mentioned, and there is no reference to dark energy; the age of the universe is given as 'about 15 billion years', and I quote from page 174: 'The expansion rate (of the universe) is inexorably slowing.' Unfortunately, outdated concepts like these undermine the credibility of the book on the whole. I hope the authors review the book soon.
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Great book
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-05-02
Very easy to understand and almost always interesting. If you like physics at all, this is a great overview of everything you want to know.
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The reality myth
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-12-07
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Just before his death, Albert Einstein attempted to console a grieving widow by reminding her that only in the illusory now did her spouse fail to continue to exist.
And its from this jumping off point that really deep discussions of physics ultimately become really deep discussions as to the nature of reality and our true place in it.
While a more concise and current treatment of these topics can be found in Lee Smolin's Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, it's impressive how Davies and Gribbon have produced a book that largely stands up to the test of time perhaps not so much in its cutting edge science as in its orientation to that science.
The seeming rock hard quality of the now and the artifacts that inhabit merely reflects the way in which we've been created. As has been teased out in both good science and good science fiction, were we to alter our ability to experience time the nature of our lives would vary dramatically.
And so the chicken-egg question of matter and energy finds it solution in the discovery that the universe is comprised of processes and not things. In this way the stars and the planets and our beings are so many ripples in the sea sometimes cresting but all ultimately following back into the surf from which they sprang.
Mind blowing book...read it even though it is a little old.
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THERE IS NO MACHINE
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-10-17
8 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
The first chapter of this book is entitled "The Death of Materialism," and the final line of the book concludes that Gilbert Ryle was right to dismiss Descartes' "ghost in the machine," "not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine." The matter myth has maintained that reality consists of material particles flying around in a void as they are affected by forces. With the advent of chaos theory, physicists now maintain that the stuff of the universe possesses an innate tendency to self-organize, which at least hints at the possibility of a teleological universe. It is interesting that it is the physicists who are positing the notion that consciousness might be an innate property of existence, and the prominent life scientists are we are nothing but gene and meme machines.
I realized upon reading this book that old notions never die, they just spiral upward. Had Planck called the particles of energy emitted by a hot body "phlogistons" instead of "quanta," then we might very well study "phlogiston mechanics." A phlogiston has at least as much in common with a quantum as the modern atom has with the atom of Dalton. And Aristotle's rejection of the existence of vacuum in favor of the notion that dense matter was vortices in the plenum is essentially correct. "Vacuum" is replete with energy, and virtual particles, and matter is thought to be warped space. Now perhaps entelechy will be revived in a modern form.
As a teacher of IB Theory of Knowledge, I have found THE MATTER MYTH an excellent book for high school students with an interest in science but still at a rudimentary level of knowledge. The first chapter gives a clear explanation of just exactly what is meant by Kuhn's paradigm shift, and the book as whole provides a lively, readable account of cutting-edge of science and its relation to philosophical ideas.
(Peter Payne, author of CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA BATTLES THE BEELZEBUBIAN BEASTS OF THE BIBLE)
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Unreal!
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-04-13
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is an excellent book that clearly presents the current theories of physics. This is so interesting (and not hard to understand at this high-level presentation), it should be on the reading list of anyone who has the slightest curiousity about our universe; about the reality he or she perceives. What I find most interesting, between this book and a couple others, is how bizarre the theories are getting. It seems to me that physics has edged up against philosophy and is approaching the point where science will no longer be able to provide answers to the remaining big questions. Maybe the answers to those questions will forever remain philosophical or religious because science can't get there.
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