In this provocative reassessment of science, a physicist questions whether it can ever fully comprehend the entire material universe.

There is no question that modern science has radically advanced our understanding of nature, the universe, and even reality itself. But in Lawless Universe, theoretical physicist Joe Rosen takes the scientific method down a peg. In his estimation, people like Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins are wrong to declare that science is on the verge of unlocking all the secrets of the universe. Perhaps without realizing it, they have crossed into the realm of metaphysics in an attempt to explain the unexplainable.

Rosen considers the separate but entangled domains of science and metaphysics and examines the all-too-often ignored boundary between the objective and the subjective. He asserts that any understanding of the whole universe, if it is to be found at all, must come from nonscientific modes of comprehension and insight.

© 2010 Johns Hopkins University Press (Ebook): 9780801899959

Release date

Ebook: 1 August 2010