The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality, Brian Greene

The dis-oriented author is an eclectic reader. Recently I was in a phase where most of my reading was history. From the French Revolution to the Founding Fathers to the Second World War I have enjoyed my time reading history. I also read a lot of science and mathematics and these books have been stacking up on my shelf.

My brother-in-law introduced me to Brian Greene's writings when he gave me Greene's excellent first book: The Elegant Universe. In that book Greene spelled out one of the fundamental issues of modern physics — unifying Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

The Fabric of the Cosmos focuses primarily on advances in cosmology. According to Greene, many physicists are calling this the Golden Age of Cosmology. This is a fascinating thought-provoking book.

Brian Greene is one of those scientists who has a gift for conveying complex ideas to a lay readership. His success as an author has spawned a successful series on Nova. In this book Greene spells out the evolution of cosmology.

After Greene's first book, I felt that I had a good understanding of some basics of Quantum Mechanics. I already had some exposure to Special and General Relativity but The Elegant Universe helped tie them together in String Theory.

This book applies new developments and conjectures to cosmology. Greene spends a great deal of time asking (and sometimes answering) questions about what happened before, during and immediately after the Big Bang. Many of the theories presented  in this book are controversial even in the scientific community.

As I read this book it was sometimes challenging to determine where the  physics ended and philosophy began. One of the most interesting things I got from the book is a look into the nature of discovery and research in modern physics and the relationship to my own discipline of mathematics.

Regular readers may wonder how the dis-oriented author who is a creationist can recommend this book so highly. The answer is simple, Greene is a compelling author and this book is as good as any I have read recently on modern evolutionary cosmology. As I read the book I got a glimpse of where physics is on the issue of origins.

Some may read this book and conclude that there is no God. Others may take a more Deist point of view, for example God may be a Higgs Field. I read this and other modern physics book and I see the hand of the Creator.

... The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

Psalm 19:1, KJV

The Fabric of the Cosmos gets 5 of 5 dis-oriented smileys

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