author : Brian K. Ridley

It aims to extract, from a whole range of specialized activities, the basic essential concepts and to present them in plain non-mathematical language. There are some splendidly bizarre ideas in physics, and it seems a pity to keep them locked up in narrow boxes, available only to a small esoteric crowd of key holders.

Dr Ridley deals here with all the basic concepts which physicists use to understand the universe – electro-magnetism, gravity, mass, energy, time, motion, space – and explains the techniques with which they manipulate those concepts.

Articulate voices from biology preach the belief in 18th century materialism in the study of evolution; those from physics promulgate a kind of mathematical theology in its study of elementary particles and cosmology; both inveigh against heresy. But science should be beyond that sort of belief. It should not see its undoubted success in manipulating matter as justifying any sort of religious status, as offering a spiritual foundation alternative to religion.

As a scientist, Brian Ridley is appalled by such theological trends, and in this book he attempts to address these concerns, to reform science and place it in its broad historical and philosophical context where dogmatic belief has no place, to remind science itself that it has limitations.