Bishopston Not A Book Group  : November

Explanations and Beauty on 7 November 2013 at 19:30 at Chris's

My suggestion was for an evening based around "This Explains Everything" edited by John Brockman, who is editor of the website edge.org. This is one of several books which are collections of offerings on questions posed on the forum - this one on the Question "What is your favourite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation", The 150 or so chapters are by a wide variety of scientists of many hues, philosophers and writers and present a taxing panoply of both current and forgotten theories.
I thought we could add our own answer to the central question as well as discuss the book.
The choosing suggested expanding the topic to the questions "Can explanations be beautiful? Doesn't an explanation (eg science) destroy beauty? " It is addressed by some of the writers above but also by Richard Feynman.

Links

Contributions

Cantor's Diagonalization proof

submitted by John Mac

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Ian Stewart (mathematician)

submitted by Will

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Richard Feynman

submitted by ?

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Maxwell's Equations

submitted by Chris

Maxwell's equations unify electricity and magnetism. They are the theoretical foundation on which our lifeform is based, both at internal cell-level and since Faraday's invention of the dynamo, external technological society.

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Paul Dirac

submitted by Will

Of course, one of the scientists who was nearly obsessional about so called (mathematical) beauty was our own Paul Dirac of 6 Julius Road - I know the blue plaque is Monk Road but they (his parents) went up-market.

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Lee Smolin

submitted by Mark

“Scientific communities, and the larger democratic societies from which they evolved, progress because their work is governed by two basic principles. 1. When rational argument from public evidence suffices to decide a question, it must be considered to be so decided. 2. When rational argument from public evidence does not suffice to decide a question, the community must encourage a diverse range of viewpoints and hypotheses consistent with a good-faith attempt to develop convincing public evidence. I call these the principles of the open future. They underlie a new, pluralistic stage of the Enlightenment – a stage now arising. We respect the power of reasoning when it’s decisive, and when it isn’t we respect those who in good faith disagree with us. The limitation to people of good faith means people within the community who accept these principles. Within such communities, knowledge can progress, and we can strive to make wise decisions about a future that is not completely knowable.”

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