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Title: The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless
ISBN: 1400032245
Author:
John D. Barrow
Publicate Date: 2006-09-12
Publish: 2006-09-12
List Price: $15.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $8.95
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $7.74
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Fascinating
Barrow is one of my favorite authors, and his lucid explanation of fascinating topics is always a pleasure.
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2: Thinking about the unthinkable
This is a marvelous book. Infinity is a tough concept to wrap your mind around, but Prof. Barrow makes it as understandable as anyone possibly can. He goes deep into the subject -- this is by no means a superficial treatment -- yet never loses an attentive reader. His brilliant final chapter, dealing with the theory of time travel, will knock your socks off. Barrow has a nice wit, and as a special bonus he has seeded the text with some intriguing Briticisms that were new to me, but happily understandable from the context.
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3: The various faces of infinity
This book discusses infinity. This concept has a precise definition in mathematics and since the times of Cantor we know that there are various degrees of infinity, one of the most interesting problems being whether there in an infinite between the cardinal of the natural numbers and that of the real numbers, the so called continuum hypothesis, which was proven to be undecidable in the usual Zermelo-Frankel-Choice axioms of set theory.
In recent times, cosmologists, whether those adopting the inflationary scenario or those favouring the cyclic universe, are pondering whether the universe is infinite in space and possibly eternal in time (although some believe it had a beginning about 14 billion years ago, but may never end).
So the topic of the book is pertinent to our age.
Naturally, the idea of infinite is also related to the idea of God, although this is not a scientific subject, but possibly a philosophical one.
The first part of the book is a hystorical review of the concept of infinity, from Zeno and Aristotle to Kant and Cantor, via St. Augustine. A very entertaining chapter is the one about the Hotel Infinity and all the challenges that the manager meets, quite successfully and that would be impossible in a hotel with only a finite number of rooms. The second part of the book deals more with physics and cosmology, things like the singularities at the center of black holes. It is interesting to learn that an English astronomer of the 16th century already proposed that the universe is infinite. The question of the possible topologies of the universe is discussed, although we do not know yet the answer. The important distinction between the observable universe and the universe as such is made in page 139 where the radius of the visible universe is stated to be 42 billion light years (which seems to be the correct figure if we take into account the expansion of the universe since the light emitted 14 billion years ago has reached us). Unhappily , the drawing in the next page will confound the lay reader because the radius is pictured at 14 billion light years. (There are also some other minor mistakes in the book, which would have been avoided by a careful reviewer before publishing. Another example is the graph in page 190 which suggests that expansion of the universe is decelerating, contrary to recent data of supernovas). Naturally, the limit on how fast information can spread will probably preclude us from knowing whether the universe is infinite unless we can get some degree of confidence on some basic theory that predicts this infinity.
The book also discusses interesting problems regarding the impact on ethics of inmortality and the possibility of clones in an infinite universe (Vilenkin has explored also this idea in one of his books). Physicists have changed their views on the universe in the last 30 years when it was hoped that The Theory of Everything would be mathematically unique and would determine one universe. Instead, superstring theory has landed with a whole landscape of possible universes. So the question remains, how we happen to live in such universe that has made it possible for life to appear (at least in the Earth, possibly in many other planets) and to develop a self-conscious and inquisitive species by means of which the universe interrogates itself? The diverse answers are tabulated in page 186.
It also has another chapter on virtual reality "?? la Matrix" (simulated universes) and it also discusses the possibility that advanced civilizations are capable of cultivating universes, the way we grow cornfields or build cities.
Another of the subjects discussed by the author is that of machines capable of supertasks . I found very interesting the 4-body configuration discovered by Xia in 1971 that , according to Newton's theory , sends the 4 bodies at infinite distance in finite time. Einstein's general relativity doesn't allow this, so that infinities did appear not only in quantum mechanics, but also in newtonian mechanics.
One of the important conclusions of the book is that the human race is not necessarily equipped to know all things that are true about the universe. "We have no special right to expect that all truths about the Universe can be tested by observations that are within our reach: that really would be an anti-Copernican outlook" (page 198).
The book is an eye opener for those readers not familiar with the role of infinity in the mathematical and physical sciences, but if you look for definite answers about these difficult problems you will not find them here (not in other books, of course).
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4: Infinite questions.
I have not been disappointed by any of John Barrow's book so far. He has a unique gift of writing with exceptional clarity about difficult topics. This is not a typical cosmology book, but large portion is devoted to beginning, shape and future of The Universe.
Like in his previous "Book of Nothing", author mixes philosophical and scientific musings about infinities (big and small) affecting theology, mathematics, cosmology, physics (TOE) and our existence.
I found Georg Cantor's life and his quest for understanding "absolute infinity" (God?) quite interesting and emotional. And check how Blaise Pascal argued about believing (or not) in God, because of infinite gain (or loss!!).
One truth emanates from "The Infinite Book": we are far, infinitely far from knowing the truth about everything (Immanuel Kant's rings the bell!). The more we learn the bigger infinite number of questions surface in front of us. Are we nearing the limits of knowledge? Professor John Barrow does not suggest it has come to this, but read about them and enjoy stretching your mind.
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5: Light infinite
If you are interested in infinity and you are not familar with Cantor or Borges' "The Library of Babel", then you may be amazed by this book. Otherwise, you can find it too light. Probably good as a light summer reading.
Infinity is a fascinating subject, and I thought that this book would contain a lot of interesting information in its 300 pages. I have found many quotations, a lot of superficial theology and ethics, and little information on the concept itself. I missed more depth in handling the mathematical concepts.
Anyway, there is a very good part of the book (from my point of view) devoted to eternal inflation and simulated universes, especially for how the theories are introduced and chained. Even if it is not strictly related to infinity, it is the best part of the book. The chapter that describes Cantor's works is worth reading too.
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