Lake Views: This World and the UniverseJust as Henry David Thoreau “traveled a great deal in Concord,” Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg sees much of the world from the window of his study overlooking Lake Austin. In Lake Views Weinberg, considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist alive today, continues the wide-ranging reflections that have also earned him a reputation as, in the words of New York Times reporter James Glanz, “a powerful writer of prose that can illuminate—and sting.” |
Contents
Waiting for a Final Theory | 1 |
Can Science Explain Everything? Anything? | 6 |
Peace at Last in the Science Wars | 24 |
The Future of Science and the Universe | 28 |
Dark Energy | 47 |
How Great Equations Survive | 52 |
On Missile Defense | 59 |
The Growing Nuclear Danger | 80 |
Four Golden Lessons | 146 |
The Wrong Stuff | 150 |
A Turning Point? | 168 |
About Oppenheimer | 172 |
Einsteins Search for Unification | 178 |
Einsteins Mistakes | 186 |
Living in the Multiverse | 196 |
A Deadly Certitude | 210 |
Is the Universe a Computer? | 96 |
Foreword to A Century of Nature | 113 |
Ambling toward Apocalypse | 116 |
What Price Glory? | 123 |
Israel and the Liberals | 226 |
Sources | 247 |