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A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down
by Robert Laughlin
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Basic Books (2005-03-01)
ISBN: 046503828X
EAN: 9780465038282
Dewy Decimal #: 530
Hardcover: 272 pages
Release Date: 2005-03-01
SKU: 081408005
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...No noticeable Underlining or Highlighting...
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Not since Richard Feynman has a Nobel Prize-winning physicist written with as much panache as Robert Laughlin does in this revelatory and essential book. Laughlin proposes nothing less than a new way of understanding fundamental laws of science. In this age of superstring theories and Big-Bang cosmology, we're used to thinking of the unknown as being impossibly distant from our everyday lives. The edges of science, we're told, lie in the first nanofraction of a second of the Universe's existence, or else in realms so small that they can't be glimpsed even by the most sophisticated experimental techniques. But we haven't reached the end of science, Laughlin argues-only the end of reductionist thinking. If we consider the world of emergent properties instead, suddenly the deepest mysteries are as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt. And he goes farther: the most fundamental laws of physics-such as Newton's laws of motion and quantum mechanics -are in fact emergent. They are properties of large assemblages of matter, and when their exactness is examined too closely, it vanishes into nothing.A Different Universe takes us into a universe where the vacuum of space has to be considered a kind of solid matter, where sound has quantized particles just like those of light, where there are many phases of matter, not just three, and where metal resembles a liquid while superfluid helium is more like a solid. It is a universe teeming with natural phenomena still to be discovered. This is a truly mind-altering book that shows readers a surprising, exquisitely beautiful and mysterious new world.
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Customer Reviews
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Why do they love it and hate it?
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-11-11
As with Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", this is a book with valuable philosophical insights, which many reviewers dismiss because those are not physical insights. Hence the mix of 5 and 1 star reviews. In other words, don't come here to learn physics, but if you like "why" questions, then read this book.
A book that makes people angry is not necessarily revolutionary, but revolutionary books do make people angry.
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Self-indulgent and offensive but absolutely wonderful
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-08-16
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book will probably offend you because of its *seemingly* flippant dismissal of various current popular theories such as string theory. The author comes across as arrogant, and the book is quite self-indulgently edited.
The good news is that it made clear to me, in a way that had never happened before, the depth of the problems facing naive reductionism. He shows how in many cases reductionist results have a high degree of bogosity. None of the solid states of water were predicted in advance, but after they were discovered "explanations" were readily found.
He convinced me that current "fundamental" physics is almost certainly no such thing and is almost certainly a set of emergent phenomena based on at least one more layer of physics.
The author's arrogance is tempered by the fact that he is quite happy to make fun of himself when this helps to make his point. Which is, in part, that the world is full of things we really don't understand and we need to be a bit more humble about it and accept the need to understand things on their own terms.
I would suggest that if you have read this book and did not have your understanding of physics and science generally radically changed, it might be worth reading it again and more carefully.
This is one of the best popular books on physics I have ever read and I highly recommend it.
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A Disappointing Universe
Rating  (1)
Date: 2008-07-05
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I am compelled to read and study science and mathematics and usually have several books on quantum theory, cosmology, relativity, and the nature of consciousnesses going at any moment in time. I select my reads carefully and am rarely disappointed, but I really blew it in choosing Robert Laughlin's "A Different Universe." I grudgingly finished the book hoping that there would be some insight near the end that would make getting through the rest of it worthwhile, but alas no cigar. My specific criticisms are as follows. The book is extremely light in physics and heavy in personal anecdotes and attempts at sarcastic humor, some of which is funny, but then I didn't look under humor when I choose this book. The physics, chemistry and biology that Laughlin does include are dealt with in a cursory manner as if they were inside jokes not requiring thorough explanation. If I had not previously read extensively on the main topic of the book, "emergence", I would have ended "A different Universe" still confused about the concept. If you are interested in a clear book on the subject I would recommend, "The Emergence of Everything-how the world became complex" by Harold Morowitz. The reason I read these books is to get an ever increasing understanding of the natural world and I hope that the scientist writing them will offer up a new metaphor, analogy or image that will enlighten my understanding. I assume that Laughlin has that ability, but at least for me, failed to display it in "A different Universe."
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A Very Funny Book...
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-01-14
10 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
... and deliberately provocative, as several other reviewers failed to realize. If I were a good deal younger, I'd describe Prof. Laughlin's humor as "snarky", but since that adjective isn't yet in my vocabulary I'll have to go with "sm*rt-*ssed". It's perhaps a sort of humor that tickles the funny-bones of science nerds most, rather like 'viola jokes' amongst us musicians, and the anecdotes almost certainly offend those readers who find they are the butts of Laughlin's humor. He is unrepentantly scornful of those he perceives as fools. But how can you resist his description of String Theory: "a textbook case of a Deceitful Turkey, a beautiful set of ideas that will always remain just out of reach. Far from a wonderful technological hope for tomorrow, it is instead the tragic consequence of an obsolete belief system..." Yeah! I happen to think of String Theory, if I have to, as Sudoku for Metaphysicians.
The unifying theme of A Different Universe is that physical sciences have "stepped firmly out of the age of reductionism into the age of emergence." I won't attempt to parse that statement; it would be like giving away the end of a suspense novel.
There are also moments of homiletic wisdom to be found, sauced with humor. In his chapter about nuclear science vs. applied nuclear engineering (think Hiroshima), Laughlin writes: "... self deception has consequences. Most of the time the effect is not as dire as warfare, but simply a degradation of the quality of life. These degradations include such happy institutions as road rage, divorce court, and excessively long faculty meetings." Make of that sermon what you will! It's not unamusing to find a Nobel-winning tenured professor at Stanford still picturing himself as Peck's Bad Boy or James Dean.
Geneticists should be warned that Laughlin is particularly harsh about their methodologies, even though he grudgingly admits that his kind of physics is a good deal more like biology than like the physics of yesteryear. Antone who has invested her/his retirement funds in nanotechnology will also have reason to cringe; Laughlin regards nanotubes as microcosmic black holes that swallow research money and never release it.
Proponents of "Intelligent Design" should be VERY careful not to leap to any assumption that Laughlin's ideas of emergent self-organization might support their beliefs. Quite the opposite: his Emergence utterly dispenses with any need, philosophical or scientific, for a Designer.
Much of what Prof. Laughlin writes, and writes about, will be cutting-edge difficult for many readers, but those readers will be hard-pressed to find a more engaging and comprehensible account of quantum mechanics, indeterminacy, the Standard Model, and other such items of bedtime reading than A Different Universe. Buy it for the jokes, and you may stay for the insights.
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Simply Brilliant
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-11-26
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Laughlin provides a broad sweep of reductionist physics, takes that reductionist model to it's logical limit and then gives us a a worthy suprise- the birth of "emergence" theories in physics at the other end of the spectrum in size. He eventually shares that what we think of as classical or Newtonian physics is actually emergent from quantum physics, once the scale of atoms or molecules become great enough. Further, emergence theories explain new patterns found in nature not at the atomic, but rather at the system and organizational level. What I loved about the book was his crystal clear and approachable writing, sense of humor, excitement of discovery, and personal stories from time spent with some of the greatest thinkers of our time. The new theories of emergence also help explain why open systems or starfish style networks often self organize and produce such tremendous power and beauty in their output. As a co-author of "The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations," I find that "A Different Universe" helps explain the mysterious power of decentralized organization that sometimes "just happens" in a free and open system. The "organizational" models and theories from physics often have parallels in human groups. This book is a masterpiece in both physics and organizational thinking.
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