Synopses & Reviews
Are there really laws governing the universe? Or is the order we see a mere artifact of the way evolution wired the brain? And is what we call science only a set of myths in which quarks, DNA, and information fill the role once occupied by gods? These questions lie at the heart of George Johnson's audacious exploration of the border between science and religion, cosmic accident and timeless law. Northern New Mexico is home both to the most provocative new enterprises in quantum physics, information science, and the evolution of complexity and to the cosmologies of the Tewa Indians and the Catholic Penitentes. As it draws the reader into this landscape, juxtaposing the systems of belief that have taken root there,
Fire in the Mind into a gripping intellectual adventure story that compels us to ask where science ends and religion begins.
"A must for all those seriously interested in the key ideas at the frontier of scientific discourse."--Paul Davies
Table of Contents
Introduction: Kivas, Moradas, and the Secrets of the Nuclear Age
I. Four Magic Mountains
1. Phaedrus's Ghosts
2. The Depth of the Atom
3. The Height of the Sky
Tesuque Interlude: The Riddle of the Camel
II. "The Cold, Gray Cave of Abstraction"
4. The Demonology of Information
5. The Undetermined World
6. The Democracy of Measurement
San Ildefonso Interlude: The Mystery of Other minds
III. "A Fever Matter"
7. The Dawn of Recognition
8. The Arrival of the Fittest
9. In Search of Complexity
10. In the Eye of the Beholder
Truchas Interlude: The Leap into the Unknown
Conclusion: The Ruins of Los Alamos