Talk:The Dancing Wu Li Masters

message: The footnotes were basically commentary by physicists on his understanding and presentation of modern (since 1900) physics.
Does anyone else's edition (mine got lost) have that? I thought it was particularly a good way to do such a New Agey physics book. When I asked Richard Feynman about it specifically he said it didn't save it, and that both it and Tao of Physics were, in his experience, unreadable. Nonetheless the author's willingness to have what seemed like more than a dozen physicists essentially saying "this is nonsense" or "this is wrong" about some of his points, right on the same page where he made various claims, was pioneering and would have been a good model for later books. I got my sister the audioboook because she wanted an overview and I would say that without the footnotes it's a completely different book.
I would like to include that if I could nail down an edition with all the notes and review it to see if my memory is right. MarionADelgado 10:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not _all that_ pioneering. he's a journo, not a genuinely "committed" crackpot, so controversy helps him.137.205.183.31 (talk) 07:17, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The edition I had (paperback?) had good footnotes - sometimes a third of a page would be devoted to critiques and even counters to the main points 

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:DancingWuLiMastersGaryKukav.jpg

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message: Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MroBJsi9y6g
--S k4p4s (talk) 22:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links  

message: Amazon.com Review
At an Esalen Institute meeting in 1976, tai chi master Al Huang said that the Chinese word for physics is Wu Li, "patterns of organic energy." Journalist Gary Zukav and the others present developed the idea of physics as the dance of the Wu Li Masters--the teachers of physical essence. Zukav explains the concept further:
::The Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Wu Li Master always begins at the center, the heart of the matter.... This book deals not with knowledge, which is always past tense anyway, but with imagination, which is physics come alive, which is Wu Li....  - Mary Ellen Curtin; from:
~Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 17:12, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor expansion based on the following: 

message: Not withstanding the fact that I haven't read this book in twenty years (other than a hefty little refresher on certain sections before commenting here) I'd like to discuss this wording as well, as it does not seem quite accurate to the book's tone, nor consistent with it's notability.  Mind you, this is not the most formalistic or traditional discussion of theoretical physics around, but "new age" is surely a mischaracterization of Zukav's exploration of that topic, which really is rooted firmly in scientific consensus on the topic (albeit now 30 years out of date).  The discussion of the perspectives of eastern spiritual traditions are utilized as metaphors for actual concepts in quantum physics, not as some sort of pseudo-science/metaphysics that muddles actual science with spiritualism; one can go thirty pages without seeing reference to a single "tantric" or dharmic concept, while reading solely about subatomic particles and conventional hard science.  Here's a passage that exemplifies probably 95%+ of this work:
::"In the left half of the diagram, a proton emits a positvely charged pion, momentarily transforming itself into a neutron.  Before the pion can be re-absorbed, however, it is captured by a nearby neutron.  This pion capture causes the neutron to transform itself into a proton.  The exchange of the positive pion causes the proton to become a neutron and the neutron to become a proton. The two original nucleons, now bound together by this exchange, have changed roles."
In other words, while this may not be Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking, nor even Fritjof Capra or Simon Singh or any of a number of other popular science authors who have tried to impart the conceptual weirdness of quantumn phenomena accurately to a general audience without conventional mathematical framework, it is a far, far cry from a Deepak Chopra or some other similar purveyor of the kind of psuedoscience and spiritualism that is usually meant when one uses the terms "quantum mysticism" or even New Age broadly.   And speaking of hard science educators no less principled and illustrious than Sagan, he frequently pointed out the coincidental and poetic symmetry between some traditional eastern cosmology and emerging concepts in physics--again strictly as metaphor.  Numerous chapters in Cosmos begin with or are fixated upon some piece of eastern religious imagery or traditional philosophy, and that's the seminal work of the world's greatest modern rationalist scientific educator.  Lastly, there's the matter of how the book was received by scientists; as our article on Zukav himself states (in quotes that really would be better placed int his article than that one, by the way), mathematicians and physicists mostly embraced the book as an accurate (if simplified and incomplete) rendering of concepts that are difficult to impart to people without some background in mathematics or the physical sciences; the book won the National Book Award in the science category for the same reason.
I think the confusion here mostly arises from....well, the entire rest of Zukav's career and, to some extent, the way this book was marketed; having been featured on Oprah a bazillion times tends to make scientists skeptical of your empirical chops, given how many absolute quacks and flim-flam men have gained fame for their confused notions of science on that show.   Zukav is undeniably a spiritualist first and foremost, whose other works seem to be typified by colorful spiritual notions.  But with this, his first book, he made it clear that he does have a decent grasp of the actual physical concepts explored and the history of the researchers who have grappled with them (again, up to 1979 anyway). TRPoD is right to focus on the fact that we must be consistent with what our sources say on the topic, but if we look through the great wealth of reviews of this book in the popular press (of which there are plenty), and comments from experts in the salient fields, I think we'll quickly see that WP:WEIGHT does not fall on "new age" as the best primary descriptor of the book.  I'd not propose a seismic shift here; the spiritual metaphors do set the tone in the early chapters and there should be some reference to this twist on the dialogue in the lead.  But to not give this book credit as a genuine popular science book--given its accolades and reception--is inappropriate, I feel.  Snow let's rap 04:30, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Let's see if we can renew this stale discussion and get some meaningful improvement from it