Brian Greene has boldly done what no man has ever done before.
Through the agency of his book 'The Elegant Universe', he has made the dizzying
world of modern physics seem approachable.
As an engineer, who has learnt about human understanding of the
microscopic and the macroscopic world within the confines of an undergraduate
class only to be dazed and confused, this book is definitely a breath of fresh
air. I would even go ahead and say that this book lays a template as to what
teaching physics should be like.
Without losing sight of the importance of the material at hand, Greene
adopts a systematic approach to introduce the readers the language of the Gods-
physics.
Making use of vibrant imagery, Greene guides his reader into a
dimensionless space, where he is all but a neutral bystander- watching the
metaphors that Brian has so painstakingly woven, unfold to reveal the
subtleties of our universe.
And it is in the subtlety of the metaphors that he constructs,
where Greene accomplishes the onerous task of keeping the reader engrossed
without overwhelming them. Whether it is the use of an elastic band to explain how
gravity is the curvature in space-time fabric, or the how long lost passengers
George and Gracie, floating away through the emptiness of space can have
disparate experiences of the world they both dwell in due to the differences in
their frames of references, each making correct but incongruent observations.
Like an onion, with each page, a different layer is peeled of his well
thought out metaphors to give the readers an understanding of yet another layer
of complexity in the organization of the world in and around us.
The end result is a logical flow of principles of physics where we
move from Newtonian physics to Einstein’s theory of relativity and the world of
quantum mechanics to the realization of their incompatibility at the smallest
and the biggest scales of nature. All of this leads to the grand unifying theory
of everything, the string theory.
While admitting the incompleteness in our scientific understanding
of the subtle implications of string theory, Greene lays down a framework for a
layman to perform thought experiments wherein the pop-culture references
including time travel or existence in alternate dimensions do not seem alien.
I cannot end without saying that I do not
completely understand string theory. Like a work of art, the longer I think
about it, the more details I can conceive, but also the more confused I get.
Yet, this is definitely worth a read.
