Dreams of a Final Theory

January 31, 1994
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Weinberg's quest for a final explanation of the laws of nature displays a scientist's sense of wonder and an artist's love of beauty.

January 4, 1993
The mirage of a ``Grand Unified Theory,'' which would be a final explanation of the laws of nature, tantalized Einstein 75 years ago and still shimmers just over the horizon of quantum mechanics. Weinberg, who shared a 1979 Nobel Prize (with Abdus Salam and Sheldon L. Glashow) for linking electromagnetism and the ``weak'' force, here offers a ``state of the theory'' report. His slightly elegaic tone suggests that he is attempting not only to sum up but also to pass along the quest for the ultimate vision of nature to a new generation, a goal which he admirably achieves. In his first trade book, The First Three Minutes , the author made it clear that theory in physics can be a prism of human passions. Here he describes the search for a final theory as the extreme human intellectual adventure that it is, choosing to face (as Stephen Hawking did not in A Brief History of Time ) the most radical question about nature: ``What About God?'' Weinberg frames the search for nature's final theory with an artisan's skill, a scientist's sense of wonder and an artist's love of beauty.

Tindle accomplishes one of the primary tasks of an audiobook reader: He sounds like what we might imagine the author to sound like. Listening to this audiobook, one feels as if one has entered the classroom of a popular physics professor. With a clear tenor voice, Tindle never falters in this reading, even when tackling the many difficult physics terms relating to the search for one theory to unify the forces of the universe; electromagnetism, gravity, the strong force and the weak force. His pace seems a bit fast at times, but that may be because he is discussing theoretical physics, which is difficult for any listener to consume. Weinberg, a Nobel laureate, aims in this book to explain attempts at the unification theory that eluded Einstein to a non-specialist audience, and he generally succeeds in this attempt. M.L.C. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine