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The Shape Of Inner Space: String Theory And The Geometry Of The Universe's Hidden Dimensions (2010)

by Shing-Tung Yau(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0465020232 (ISBN13: 9780465020232)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Basic Books

review 1: I don't know how I ended up reading almost the entire thing. The book tries ambitiously to convey the essence of string theory, Kalabi-Yau conjecture, etc in a mere 300 page of layman's words, through the narrative of a professional writer and perhaps not even an amateur mathematician/physicist. One has to recall Richard Feynman being asked to explain half-spin Dirac-Fermi particles in a way that's understandable to a freshman class and responded famously after moments of pause that he found it impossible, because "we do not really understand it". Same is probably true here. Notice the clear distinction here between understanding a concept versus understanding a hopelessly long mathematical proof. Ontologically there may be no difference between the two. In practice, howe... morever, for a subject sitting so closely to reality, physics has no mathematical excuses.
review 2: While "The Shape of Inner Space" fails at being a popular science book, it succeeds at being what popular science books were meant to be, which is to share interesting ideas with you if you wrestle with it. It also pretends to be an autobiography of Yau but really succeeds at being a biography of the Calabi-Yau manifold. The first half was an absolute delight to work out, like mental LEGO collection, and I managed to learn some good math and physics along the way mostly with the help of Wikipedia. I was out-grappled by the second half, for which I need some cross-training (astronomy and physics?) before I can do a round 2. This is of course a good reminder of my weak fundamentals, and motivation is never bad.Feels like: a mathematical physics version of "In Search of Memory," which gave me an extremely similar experience. less

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