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Dismantling the Universe: The Nature of Scientific Discovery
Dismantling the Universe The Nature of Scientific Discovery Author:Richard Morris How does scientific method actually work? How is it possible for scientists to periodically "dismantle" a universally accepted interpretation of nature and replace it with a new, surprisingly different, often unsettling picture of the world? — In Dismantling the Universe, Dr. Richard Morris explores these and other fundamental que... more »stions to provide an informative and fascinating account of the nature of scientific discovery. Writing in language addressed to the layman, he ranges in his examples from the speculations of the ancient Greeks to the most recent cosmological hypotheses, from the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics to that of geological plate tectonics.
Scientific breakthroughs, argues Dr. Morris, are achieved not by the slow gathering and sifting of evidence as is commonly believed but by means of sudden imaginative leaps that revolutionize a current, "commonsense" view of the world, such as the geocentric nature of the universe or the notion that time must be a universal constant. Citing the experiences of such towering figures as Kepler, Einstein, and Bohr, Morris champions the primacy of theory and insight in bringing about the great scientific revolutions. He also probes the connection between scientific discovery and the human imagination, and offers an illuminating discussion of the similarities and differences between art, religion, philosophy and science. « less