The Motion Paradox: The 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle behind All the Mysteries of Time and Space.THE MOTION PARADOX: The 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle behind All the Mysteries of Time and Space JOSEPH MAZUR Joseph Mazur (born in the Bronx in 1942) is a professor of Mathematics at Marlboro College, in Marlboro, Vermont. He holds a B.S. from Pratt Institute, where he first studied architecture. The Greek philosopher Zeno proclaimed in four famous paradoxes that motion is an illusion. To date, philosophers and scientists from Aristotle to modern-day string theorists have been unable to fully understand motion and its foundations: space and time. Mazur chronicles the conundrum conundrum A problem with no satisfactory solution; a dilemma that Zeno created and the theories that have arisen about the nature of the universe. He explains how Aristotle believed that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones, only to be proved wrong by Galileo. The author explains discoveries about the motion of the planets and the development of coordinate geometry and calculus calculus, branch of mathematics that studies continuously changing quantities. The calculus is characterized by the use of infinite processes, involving passage to a limit—the notion of tending toward, or approaching, an ultimate value. , which still didn't solve the mystery of motion. He also outlines the space-time revolution, Albert Einstein's theories of relativity, and the development of quantum theory quantum theory, modern physical theory concerned with the emission and absorption of energy by matter and with the motion of material particles; the quantum theory and the theory of relativity together form the theoretical basis of modern physics. and string theory. Dutton, 2007, 262 p., hardcover, $24.95. |
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