Explaining the Universe by John Charap, Princeton University Press, 拢19.95/$29.95, ISBN 0691006636
鈥淭HIS has been the century of science,鈥� remarked the President of the Acad茅mie des Sciences in Paris in its final meeting of the century. He was speaking in December 1900.
His words were unknowingly echoed by many science commentators two years ago, most of them celebrating the swiftness of scientific progress in the preceding century. As the latest centennial bandwagon creaks over the horizon, the distinguished physicist John Charap is now belatedly climbing aboard, with this review for the general reader of the past hundred years of progress in physics.
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Charap is seeking to emulate the success of the late Jacob Bronowski, who successfully brought the achievements of science to a lay audience in the 1970s, using plain but arresting language. Bronowski would have approved of Charap鈥檚 penchant for big ideas and his commendable dislike of 鈥減seudoscientific prattle, New Age nonsense and millennial madness鈥�. But I doubt whether Bronowski would have endorsed Charap鈥檚 strong preference for the theoretical over the experimental, and for abstract ideas over developments that have made a substantial difference to our everyday lives.
To be fair, Charap is well aware of this. He tells us at the outset that he has selected the topics that he finds the most exciting. He disarmingly admits that he is 鈥渋gnorant of much of what my fellow physicists do and hope that [they and the reader] will excuse the unevenness of my survey鈥�. Alas we are unable to act on his implicit advice as he makes it rather late, on his book鈥檚 final page.
Leaving aside reservations about the comprehensiveness of Explaining the Universe, there is no doubt that Charap has written a well-informed, accessible and appropriately non-mathematical guide to the great theories of modern physics, quantum theory and relativity. With a pleasingly broad sweep, he suggests that the Planck constant, characteristic of quantum science, dominated the 20th century while the 19th century was dominated by the speed of light in a vacuum, the quantity central to relativity. This insight neatly captures the point that Einstein鈥檚 relativity theory was really the crowning glory of the physics of the 19th century, whereas quantum theory took the crown next century.
Not everyone will agree with Charap鈥檚 reiteration of the orthodox view that relativity is a revolutionary theory. Einstein, for one, never believed this 鈥� he continually stressed that the theory joins smoothly to its classical foundations. Quantum theory, on the other hand, was truly revolutionary because it involved an abrupt departure from the theories that preceded it, and went against common sense 鈥� encouraging the modern perception that this is over-rated.
After his clear presentation of the basic ideas of these two theories, Charap becomes excited by their union in quantum field theory and its cosmological applications, for example to the theory of black holes.
Charap鈥檚 views on the current state of fundamental physics are conventional and apparently complacent, with the exception of his scepticism for the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, which envisages our entire Universe as a single developing quantum system.
He does not go so far as to predict the demise of this bizarre but undoubtedly popular interpretation in the list of predictions with which he bravely concludes the book. Rather, he foresees the development of the first usable quantum computer by the year 2010, and, before the following decade is out, an understanding of the origin of mass and of the formation of galaxies. All highly predictable. He might have added that it鈥檚 a safe bet that everyone in the year 2100 will be declaring that we are nearing the end of the century of science.