Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time [Hardcover]

Heinz R. Pagels (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0671465481 | ISBN-13: 978-0671465483 | Publication Date: June 1985

Perfect Symmetry takes us to the frontier of scientific thinking, to the state of the universe before the big bang and before that to the creation of the universe out of absolutely nothing. Dr. Pagels writes with unmatchable elegance about the complex questions raised by the new physics. Perfect Symmetry presages a times in the near future when physicists will attain total understanding of the origin and nature of the universe and its evolution, thus achieving a new outlook on the creation and existence. Pagels emphasizes the new astronomical discoveries gained through the use of radio telescopes and earth-orbiting satellites. Details on the newest scientific findings give the reader a picture of what the universe really looks like - the stars and their deaths as white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes; the structure and evolution of galaxies; and quasars and their distribution in space in the form of clusters and superclusters. Heinz Pagels is that rarest of scientist/writers-one who can make comprehensible to the layman the most complex of ideas, synthesize disciplines to create more than an overview, and bridge the gap to make science read like art.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 390 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671465481
• ISBN-13: 978-0671465483
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,501,247 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Universe As Quantum Probability Wave?, November 8, 2002

By 

Worldreels (MANKATO, MN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time (Paperback)

This book should be in print. This is an excellent primer for understanding cosmology-the birth of the universe. Although pre-string, little quantum theory is left out. But what I liked most was the last twenty pages of his reflections. There he says that scientific truth must be third person, the sharing of collective truth and not a first person ego trip. He quotes Einstein that personal truth is a kind of optical delusion-"a kind of prison for us." Like many others Pagels found some tranquility in the noosphere of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who asserted the big bang will eventually culminate in the Omega point, an ocean of consciousness where every drop of water remains conscious of itself. His message is purely scientific- liberate yourself "from the obsession with certainty and hope" since these close you "to new experiences about reality."

Pagels realized that most theoretical physics has become a belief factory and that nothing we hold as truth today will suffice for tomorow's world. He urges his reader to develop tolerance for complexity and to welcome contradiction in order to escape the fallacies inherent in simplicity and certainty. He urges his reader to live as he died-an explorer of the unknown.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a worthwhile book to read someday, November 13, 2007

By 

flashgordon "flashgordon" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time (Paperback)

I've reread this book several times over the years, and I find it a pleasure each time.

I decided to write a review today after starting yet another rereading. An observation that made me want to write a little bit of a review was some of the historical tidbits in the book. He mentions Alvin Clarke discovering a white dwarf star around the star system Serius(sorry if I got the spelling a bit off on the star system serius). Alvin Clark as noted by Heinz Pagels made the optics for the last refracting telescopes before the giant reflectors pretty much put the refractors in their places historically. Because I had read 'The Glass Giant of Palomar' I almost knew the name intimatelly. This is why books like the Perfect Symmetry' and 'the Glass Giant' have their place in the intellectual life. It's like hearing the words of Thales himself or whoever made the number patterns on the those bones tens of thousands of years ago. I then started rereading it and found even more appreciation for our time and place.

I of course have read this book before, but after writing about alot of the intellectual historic highpoints of humanity on my blog, I saw the historical viewpoint that Heinz Pagels presents of William Hershel. The fact that Hershel thought of galaxies and lookback time due to the finite speed of light . . . way back in the 1700's as oppossed to the 1900s makes all of Hershel's astronomy remarkable indeed. People have to realize that mathematical science at the time needed a certain amount of development before it could go much further than what Newton had done in the 1600's - the work of Leonard Euler and his associates. There was literally a hundred years of mathematical development before electromagnetism, chemistry, geology, biology, archaeology, and paleontology became intensive areas of study in the 1800s. But, William Herhsel's astronomy stands out before the 1800s.

The book primarilly covers the understanding of astrophysics today; it assumes a knowledge of Galileo, Kepler, and Newtonian physics. and even to a good extent Maxwell's electromagnetism. This book is a good example of how much knowledge and how many books a given person has to go through to see the extent of human knowledge.I don't mean to say that this book has a major flaw; i'm just showing that even it isn't the whole story.

The book was a great introductino to the then new inflationary cosmology at the time, and so it makes for a great reference book for 20th century thought.