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The Beautiful Invisible: Creativity, Imagination, and Theoretical Physics
Challenging the image of theoretical physics as a dry discipline, The Beautiful Invisible shows that this highly abstract science is in fact teeming with beautiful concepts, and the task of imagining them demands profound creativity, just as creative as the work of poets or magical realist
novelists such as Borges and Musil. "A good scientific theory is like a symbolic tale, an allegory of reality," writes Giovanni Vignale, as he uncovers the unexpected links between theoretical physics and artistic creativity. In engaging and at times poetic prose, and with ample quotations from
many of the writers he admires, Vignale presents his own unorthodox accounts of fundamental theoretical concepts such as Newtonian mechanics, superconductivity, and Einstein's theory of relativity, illuminating their profound implications. Throughout, the author treats readers to glimpses of physics
as "exercised in the still night, when only the moon rages." Indeed, as we delve behind now-familiar concepts such as "electron spin" and "black hole," the world that we take for granted melts away, leaving a glimpse of something much stranger.
novelists such as Borges and Musil. "A good scientific theory is like a symbolic tale, an allegory of reality," writes Giovanni Vignale, as he uncovers the unexpected links between theoretical physics and artistic creativity. In engaging and at times poetic prose, and with ample quotations from
many of the writers he admires, Vignale presents his own unorthodox accounts of fundamental theoretical concepts such as Newtonian mechanics, superconductivity, and Einstein's theory of relativity, illuminating their profound implications. Throughout, the author treats readers to glimpses of physics
as "exercised in the still night, when only the moon rages." Indeed, as we delve behind now-familiar concepts such as "electron spin" and "black hole," the world that we take for granted melts away, leaving a glimpse of something much stranger.
- GenresSciencePhysicsNonfiction
303 pages, Hardcover
First published March 10, 2011
About the author
Giovanni Vignale
13 booksGiovanni Vignale (born in Naples, Italy, 1957), is Curators' Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. After graduating from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in 1979 and gaining his PhD at Northwestern University in 1984, he worked as a postdoc at the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
He joined the Physics Department at the University of Missouri in 1988 and was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997. He has been a visiting scientist at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste and at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa; a member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California; and an Ikerbasque Fellow at the European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility in San Sebastian, Spain. Giovanni Vignale's main areas of research are many-body theory and density functional theory of electronic systems - two areas in which he has published more than 160 research papers.
He is an avid reader of about everything and a prolific unpublished writer of poems and short stories. He loves long distance running (two marathons in 2001 and 2003) and windsurfing, and intensely dislikes soccer, of which he advocates the abolition.
He joined the Physics Department at the University of Missouri in 1988 and was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997. He has been a visiting scientist at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste and at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa; a member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California; and an Ikerbasque Fellow at the European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility in San Sebastian, Spain. Giovanni Vignale's main areas of research are many-body theory and density functional theory of electronic systems - two areas in which he has published more than 160 research papers.
He is an avid reader of about everything and a prolific unpublished writer of poems and short stories. He loves long distance running (two marathons in 2001 and 2003) and windsurfing, and intensely dislikes soccer, of which he advocates the abolition.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 17, 2020
As a physicist I found this to be one of the best popular science books I have ever read. It is one of the few attempts to popularise theoretical physics beyond a few hot/trendy topics (string theory, black holes etc).
Contrary to most books of this kind the author does not feel the need to oversell the subject while misleading the reader.
I'd be curious to know how accessible it is to the typical reader.
Contrary to most books of this kind the author does not feel the need to oversell the subject while misleading the reader.
I'd be curious to know how accessible it is to the typical reader.
December 14, 2011
I don't know what to say about this. There's nothing actually wrong with this book, except that by chapter 8 I started to feeling strange and then by chapter 9 I realised ' it's this book ... it's killing me ! ' and I had to stop ...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews