A Beautiful Question
Frank Wilczek
Penguin Press, $29.95
Frank Wilczek knows how to focus a book. A Beautiful Question applies the lessons of modern physics to one query: “Does the world embody beautiful ideas?” Or, “Is the world a work of art?”
His answer is yes. The exploration of the question makes the book worthwhile.
Wilczek, winner of a Nobel Prize for work on fundamental particles and forces, applies an encyclopedic grasp of modern physical science to illustrate how science’s description of nature coincides with humankind’s multifaceted views of beauty. Take music. Its power to evoke emotions and soothe the mind seems far beyond science. Yet the math describing music’s acoustic vibrations is closely related to formulas describing atoms. Something deep seems to connect the physical world’s foundations with the human mind’s perception of harmony. Mathematics somehow seals that connection.