Our world, our universe seems best understood as a canister of disconnected tinker toys spilled and sprawled out on the floor. Now imagine each wheel, block, rubber band, and stick as a discipline or sub-discipline of science and a precocious two year old as a scientist, in particular a physicist. That child will begin to snap and connect the blocks together, uniting them in an effort to build a tower. That tower can be seen as an attempt at the grand unifying theory that connects and explains all the characteristics of the universe. Some towers are better, more graceful, than others in accomplishing this task.
Today there is great excitement in the string theory camp.
Throughout, the authors stress the esthetic motives of scientists, how they recognize truth through apprehension of mathematical beauty. From the ancient Greeks search for the one fundamental element to Galileo's reconciliation of the earth with the heavens, to Newton's theory of the motion of celestial bodies, to Einstein's space-time concept and beyond, the authors reveal how the quest for unity, for the ONE, has been the source or impetus for virtually all the great breakthroughs in science. The Grand Unifying Theory still alludes us, but as Klein and Lachieze-Rey illustrate, the quest itself yields boundless fruits of discovery and is perhaps infinitely more fascinating than the end result may turn out to be. Publicity department home page For more information contact the Publicity department .