In Search of a Theory of Everything The Philosophy Behind Physics

In Search of a Theory of Everything takes readers on an adventurous journey through space and time on a quest for a unified "theory of everything" by means of a rare and agile interplay between the natural philosophies of influential ancient Greek thinkers and the laws of modern physics. By narrating a history and a philosophy of science, theoretical physicist Demetris Nicolaides logically connects great feats of critical mind and unbridled human imagination in their ambitious quest for the theory that will ultimately explain all the phenomena of nature via a single immutable overarching law.

This comparative study of the universe tells the story of physics through philosophy, of the current via the forgotten, in a balanced way. Nicolaides begins each chapter with a relatively easier analysis of nature--one conceived by a major natural philosopher of antiquity--easing readers gradually into the more complex views of modern physics, by intertwining finely the two, the ancient with the new. Those philosophers' rigorous scientific inquiry of the universe includes ideas that resonate with aspects of modern science, puzzles about nature that still baffle, and clever philosophical arguments that are used today to reassess competing principles of modern physics and speculate about open physics problems.

In Search of a Theory of Everything is a new kind of sight, a philosophical insight of modern physics that has long been left unexamined.

Demetris Nicolaides is an award-winning professor of physics at Bloomfield College. He has authored two books, many scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, and presented his research at conferences nationally and internationally. He is a member of the American Physical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the International Association for Presocratic Studies.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter 1: Philosophy and Physics
Chapter 2: Close Encounter of the Philosophical Kind
Chapter 3: The Quest for a Theory of Everything
Chapter 4: Cosmic Justice
Chapter 5: The Stepping-Stone to Truth
Chapter 6: Numbers and Shapes
Chapter 7: The Changing Universe
Chapter 8: The Unchanging Universe
Chapter 9: Paradoxes of Nature
Chapter 10: The Chemistry of Love and Strife
Chapter 11: In Everything Is Everything
Chapter 12: Atoms of Matter and Energy
Chapter 13: Atoms of Space and Time
Chapter 14: It's Fate-Maybe
Chapter 15: Atomic Connections

Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index