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A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe
A Tear at the Edge of Creation A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe Author:Marcelo Gleiser The search for universal truth, the underlying "oneness" connecting all things, has been the abiding obsession of philosophers and alchemists, prophets and string theorists. We would cross a bridge from Occam's razor to quantum theory on a path of symmetry and elegance toward a grand, unifying Theory of Everything--a place, just over the horizon... more », where the physical laws governing very large bodies (Einstein's theory of relativity) and those governing tiny ones (quantum mechanics) unite into a single, orderly framework. Yet somehow, despite the strivings of some of history's best minds, it turns out that our description of the universe is not elegant. It is gloriously messy. In A Tear at the Edge of Creation, award-winning physicist Marcelo Gleiser argues that the quest for a Theory of Everything is fundamentally misguided: imbalance, asymmetry, and imperfection are the engines of creation, not order. In this lucid, down-to-earth narrative, translated into twelve languages, Gleiser walks us through the basic and cutting-edge science that fueled his own transformation from unifier to doubter: a fascinating scientific quest that leads him--and us--to a new understanding of what it is to be human.« less