AUTHOR EVENT AT THE BOOK WORKS

Monday, July 9, 2007, 7 pm

DR. FREEMAN DYSON: THE SCIENTIST AS REBEL

This event is sponsored in part by The Book Works friend, Leslie R. Monteath, Financial Advisor, Morgan Stanley, Rancho Santa Fe. Thank you, Leslie!
 

Dyson links an insightful discussion of the history of science with reflections on broad philosophical issues such as the morality of strategic bombing and the use of nuclear weapons, the limits of reductionism, and the relationship between science and religion.

Freeman Dyson is world-known for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, and nuclear weapons design and policy. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Dr. Dyson is presently a Professor of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, NJ.

from the Random House website:

An illuminating collection of essays by an award-winning scientist whom the London Times calls “one of the world’s most original minds.”

In the view of the prize-winning physicist Freeman J. Dyson, science, wherever it practiced, is characterized by its rebellion against the restrictions of local cultures. Like art and poetry, it resists authority. The scientist is thus by nature a rebel, loyal not to social demands but only to reason and the imagination.

Dyson believes that the best way to understand science is by understanding those who practice it. In these essays, he recounts fascinating episodes from the history of science, interspersed with reminiscences from his own life and career. His topics fall into four groups. The first takes up contemporary issues in science, from cosmology to nanotechnology to global warming. The second group deals with questions of war and peace, particularly questions of nuclear weapons and disarmament. The third group is concerned with the history of science, especially physics, with essays ranging from Isaac Newton, to Sir Ernst Rutherford and the discovery of the structure of the atom, to Einstein and Raymond Poincare, to Norbert Wiener, Richard Feynman, and string theory. The final section contains more personal and philosophical essays, dealing with such questions as the differences between science and religion, and the relation between science and the paranormal–surprisingly, Dyson argues that paranormal phenomena may actually exist yet be inaccessible to scientific verification.

This collection, by a renowned scientist who is also a lively and distinguished writer, offers fresh and often unexpected perspectives on the history, methods, and ethics of science, as well as informative and accessible ways of thinking about contentious current debates on the relations between science, religion, literature, and society.

"Dyson expresses his precise thinking in prose of crystal clarity, and readers will be absolutely enthralled by his breadth, his almost uncanny ability to tie diverse topics together and his many provocative statements. . . . His writings on Einstein, Teller, Newton, Oppenheimer, Norbert Wiener and Feynman will amuse while presenting deep insights into the nature of science and humanity. Virtually every chapter deserves to be savored."
--Publishers Weekly