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The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design [Paperback]

Leonard Susskind
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)

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Book Description

December 1, 2006 0316013331 978-0316013338 Reprint
In his first book ever, the father of string theory reinvents the world's concept of the known universe and man's unique place within it. Line drawings.

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The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design + The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics + The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (December 1, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0316013331
  • ISBN-13: 978-0316013338
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. As modern physics has developed a better understanding of how the universe operates at its most fundamental levels, one thing has become increasingly clear: we're damned lucky to be here at all. The laws of physics are precariously balanced, and were the value of one constant slightly different, life as we know it wouldn't exist. To explain the ridiculous improbability of it all, some physicists have turned to the "Anthropic Principle": the universe seems perfectly tailored to us because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe it. The underlying rationale for this argument involves the "landscape" of potential laws of physics (which, it turns out, aren't so immutable after all), a whole bunch of extra dimensions and lots of particle physics. Luckily, Susskind—the father of string theory—does the job right, guiding readers through the current controversy over the Anthropic Principle. Make no mistake: this is the cutting edge of physics as described by one of the sharpest scientific minds around. While the subtitle is a bit misleading (this isn't about intelligent design in the Kansas Board of Education sense, but actually a controversy at once bigger and less prominent), persistent readers will finish this book understanding and caring about contemporary physics in ways both unexpected and gratifying. (Dec. 12)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Physicist Susskind is a founder of string theory, and his first popular work will be of utmost significance to science readers. They will be challenged throughout by Susskind's ideas, of which strings are but a part; his driving curiosity is to discover why the laws of physics are what they are and so finely poised to permit life. Susskind discusses how slight alterations of physical values would destroy atoms and, hence, life. Deeming unscientific any proposition of a supernatural agency in setting the physical dials so exactly, Susskind advances a radical concept he calls the "landscape." Valiantly explaining it to his lay audience, Susskind, after introducing the moving parts of his theory (general relativity, quantum mechanics, vacuum energy), compares our universe to a rolling ball on an undulating landscape. Its place of rest equates to our laws of physics. In this extraordinary work, Susskind ushers us to the mind-bending edge of a possible paradigm shift. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (December 1, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0316013331
  • ISBN-13: 978-0316013338
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
226 of 239 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A slick sales job with a large side of information January 4, 2006
Format:Hardcover
Unlike the physicists who wrote the first two reviews, I don't know much 'bout string theory. Which is why I turn to books like this, or Greene's _The Elegant Universe_. Let me try to explain what this book is trying to do, and how, for one proverbial intelligent layman, it stacks up.

Susskind is a man with a mission. What he's describing here is not settled science, but his own view of the direction fundamental physics should be trying to go. In order to describe that properly, of course, he has to explain a good deal of settled physics along the way. He does this engagingly and fairly clearly, though he doesn't have the truly remarkable expository gifts of Brian Greene, and I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to tackle this book should read _Elegant Universe_ first.

The book has two tightly intertwined main theses. The first has to do with the Anthropic Principle: the observation that a large number of physical constants are required to fall within a surprisingly narrow range of values, in order for the apparatus of biology ever to appear. Slight tweaks to any of them would make galaxies, stars, atoms, chemical elements heavier than helium, to say nothing of carbon based life forms, impossible. Susskind's thesis here is that the AP is neither, as many theists would like to claim, evidence for a Designer who tailored the universe to make us possible; nor, as secular physicists would like to claim, an uninteresting tautology requiring no explanation. Rather, its explanation is to be found in the last decades' developments in string theory.
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56 of 63 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting book about the properties of reality December 25, 2005
Format:Hardcover
Is this book just what I wanted? Well, what I think I really wanted was for Einstein to return to us today and write a book on the philosophy of modern physics based on today's understanding of things. Yes, that would have been just great! But Einstein is dead. Luckily, of course, there are some excellent physicists around, such as the author of this book.

This book, written by an eminent String Theorist, has some fine explanations for the layman of some topics in modern physics, including String Theory. But the most interesting part is advertised in the title, namely the nature of the cosmic landscape.

The cosmic landscape refers to the mathematical space which has as its elements the values of the "fields" that constitute the physical laws and constants which apply to a particular "universe" (with a small u) or "pocket universe" if one prefers that term. The idea is that there may be many possible sets of physical laws and constants. The more we discover about physics, the more it seems that there are plenty of possible universes. But do they really exist? That is, is the landscape populated by more than our known universe? Is it heavily populated? The author argues that it is. And that certainly makes sense to me.

We're told about the anthropic principle. At its simplest, this principle merely states that we have to live in a universe that permits intelligent life. That's not very profound. But this principle also suggests that there is indeed a landscape of possible universes, and it encourages us to verify that only a very small fraction of them would permit the kind of complexity required for intelligent life. And in fact, Susskind gives us a good example of this.
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52 of 61 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I a bit mystified as to why so many book reviews center around God. This is a book about physics, about using the scientific method to find out how our universe works. Indeed, it even discusses our latest tentative views about many possible universes (an infinite number of them?) might work.

This book does touch on religion at one major point. Most traditional theists, including Jews, Christians and Muslims, assume that this is the only possible universe, created by God. Modern day science - which physicists fully admit is incomplete - shows that our particular universe has a number of constants, a change of which would likely make life as we know it impossible. This has been seized upon by theists as proof of God's existence and creation of the universe. Unfortunately, this is both bad science and bad theology. I don't have time to fully explain why, but I can summarize the problem: It is a "God of the Gaps" argument, which makes God smaller and more inconsequential with every subsequent discovery.

As for the actual physics content of the book, it is great. It is not meant to focus on string theory alone (for that see "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene), but it does discuss string theory in some detail, with useful diagrams. Susskind also discusses cosmology, branes, M-theory and other related ideas.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The first thing to note is Professor Susskind's insistence on using 14 billion years as the time since the Big Bang whereas most authorities today give 13.7 billion years. That of course is a minor point. More troubling is Susskind's unconvincing and quixotic support of the anthropic principle in cosmology. He characterizes the principle as "really shorthand for a much richer set of concepts that I will make clear in the chapters that follow." (p. 7)

Unfortunately--perhaps revealing the poverty of my discernment--after reading nearly four hundred pages of rather dense text I was not able to appreciate his "richer set of concepts." What I do know is that "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" (title of John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler's book from 1986), which I like to call the "anthropic cosmological fallacy," is really a kind of mystical expression that declares we are here only because of a miraculous series of events or conditions, when in fact we are here precisely because we are the sort of creatures that those events and conditions allow.

A better way to state the cosmological anthropic principle is simply this: if things in the universe were not as they are we would not be here. This avoids the unfortunate suggestion that somehow we cause the universe to be the way it is. We cause nothing. We are a result--an example--of what is possible considering the way the universe is. Notice "a" result, "an" example. Other beings might be here if the laws were different.

On page 363 Susskind writes that the anthropic principle "provides marvelous explanatory power for questions like, why is the cosmological constant small?" But this is not so. It happens that a small cosmological constant is compatible with a universe that allows life as we know it to exist.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Susskind is the laymans Physicist
First, as an Atheist, I can say this book does NOT disprove God nor does it try to. Susskind does mention God but only in the sense all physicists do, so no harm done. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Charles Underwood
4.0 out of 5 stars the book it is simply outstanding
Enjoyed the book and the outlook on where the science is...I was disappointed that the author spend little to no time talking about intelligent design. Read more
Published 26 days ago by William H. Folk II
3.0 out of 5 stars Too many concepts that you lose track sometimes
I read "the black Hole war" first and it was much clear than this one, this is why i reccomend to start with the new one and understand the concepts there, then you'll be... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Matias Moraga
4.0 out of 5 stars Good read.
Better than some of the others covering the same subject. String theory was by far the best part. Recommend for those interested in physics.
Published 4 months ago by Dillian M. Zimmerman Jr.
4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good if you like books
Susskind's CL is a few things. It is scientific, a bit biographical, and quite a bit historical. He also throws in a bit of philosophy with just a dash of theology. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Amos Jolthead
4.0 out of 5 stars Good reading but not for anybody
An interesting book. One of the very creators of String Theory trying to explain it for the educated general reader. Read more
Published 5 months ago by ps
5.0 out of 5 stars We inhabit a very strange place
Susskind is a highly respected physicist. The ideas he discusses in this book are very, very strange, but are the ideas of the future. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Charles
5.0 out of 5 stars Best High Level Theoretical Physics Book
This is perhaps the best high level theoretical physics book I've read. It covers nearly every modern aspect of theoretical physics and it does it in a clear and concise manner. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Onomojo
3.0 out of 5 stars Not a good attempt at science popularization
It suffers greatly (more than others) from the common fault in popular science books. It attempts to explain complicated concepts for the lay reader while omitting the necessary... Read more
Published 16 months ago by orbitfold
5.0 out of 5 stars one hand in my pocket
A financial crisis involving more than one bet on borrowed money is sure to become a political crisis for governments that expect a certain amount of monetary extractions to... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Bruce P. Barten
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