A Beautiful Question

May 4, 2015
Wilczek (The Lightness of Being), winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Physics, longs to find a unified field theory that would include science, art, philosophy, and all the secret corners of nature. In looking for this theory, he asks, “Is the world a work of art?” Or, alternately, “Does the world embody beautiful ideas?” Wilczek aptly dubs his intellectual voyage a “meditation,” as it wanders and leaps among historical figures, times, and concepts. His rhapsodic explanations of the development of science—especially the study of light, music, and subatomic particles—feature examples of visual art that elucidate his themes. However, Wilczek’s ubiquitous parenthetical comments, meant to trace his meandering thoughts, may confuse or irritate the reader. Pronouncements such as “gravitons are the avatars of general covariance” and “the contrast between substance and force particles—fermions and bosons—is very stark” seem self-evident to Wilczek but are liable to remain puzzling to nonphysicist readers, despite the inclusion of a glossary. Wilczek equates beauty with symmetry and conflates art with aesthetics: for him, beauty is quantifiable, not subjective. Wilczek’s enthusiasm is undeniable, but his execution is flawed. Illus.

May 15, 2015
Nobel Prize winner Wilczek (Physics/MIT; The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces, 2008, etc.) posits that a powerful Creator made the world because of "an impulse to make something beautiful." The author traces the evolution of theoretical physics beginning with Pythagoras' discovery of the numerical basis of musical harmonics and the numerical relationship among the sides of a right triangle. He finds inspiration in Plato's effort to deduce the structure of the material world from the relationship among the five regular solids. Though it "fails as a scientific theory," writes Wilczek, "Plato's vision succeeds as prophecy and...as a work of intellectual art...[exemplified] by the beauty of mathematical regularity, of perfect symmetry." The author compares the aesthetic satisfaction we experience by gaining a deeper understanding of the symmetries within nature to appreciation of the visual arts-e.g., Renaissance artists' use of perspective to explore the unity underlying different viewpoints. Moving on to the direct antecedents of modern theoretical physics, Wilczek points to James Clerk Maxwell's use of the symmetrical relationship between the electric and magnetic fields to deduce the existence of electromagnetic radiation. Even though this was not what Maxwell had in mind, his formulation was an important theoretical advance in the recognition that "equations, like objects, can have symmetry and that the equations Nature likes to use in Her fundamental laws have enormous amounts of symmetry." With nearly 100 color illustrations and a 90-page glossary, the author attempts to explain to lay readers the fundamentals of modern theoretical physics and the direction of his current research in supersymmetry. "If correct," he writes, "[it] will be a profound new embodiment of beauty in the world." While his attempts to encapsulate developments in theoretical physics are not entirely successful, the thread of his argument is clear: that physical reality is best expressed by Pythagoras' vision that "All Things are Number." A commendable investigation of the nature of reality.

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