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

Least confusing state-of-physics overview

If Neil deGrasse Tyson is the 21st century’s Carl Sagan, then Brian Greene is its Stephen Hawking. Sagan and Tyson are the great popularizers of astronomy, while Hawking brought theoretical physics into the general public’s living rooms with his bestselling classic A Brief History of Time. Greene now follows in Hawking’s footsteps as the general reader’s Virgilian guide through the confusing Hell of quantum physics and string theory. In Greene’s book The Fabric of the Cosmos, published in 2004, he discusses the very nature of time and space, the creation of the cosmos, and the workings of physics at the sub-sub-atomic level. In addition to naturally being more up-to-date than A Brief History of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos is easier to understand. Hawking may be the more important scientist (at least he’s a household name), but I found Greene to be the better explainer.

Greene takes a mostly chronological approach to this subject, beginning with Newton’s laws, then on to James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic radiation, then Albert Einstein’s general and special relativity, and on to quantum mechanics and beyond as scientists strive toward a unified theory to explain the workings of the universe. The reader follows as each successive generation of physicists points out the faults in their predecessors’ theories and formulates new ideas to resolve those issues. Greene is a proponent of string theory, so he gives that school of thought plenty of coverage. At the same time, however, he does admit there’s plenty the string theorists haven’t figured out yet. Whether discussing classical physics, relativity, or later developments, Greene is always very good about clarifying which ideas are generally accepted as fact by physicists and which are in various states of doubt, contention, or uncertainty.

Much of this is difficult for the nonphysicist to understand because so many of the answers to our questions about time and space can only be found outside the realm of our five senses, either beyond the reach of our microscopes and telescopes or perhaps in another dimension beyond the three that we perceive. Still, this book will leave you feeling amazed at the knowledge of the universe that physicists have been able to amass thus far using mathematics, logic, and indirect observation through experimentation.

This book does have some aspects that are less than satisfying. The illustrations are small and dark (in the paperback edition), making it difficult to see exactly what they’re trying to convey. The analogies that Greene chooses to illustrate his points can get annoying, like his overly cute reliance on The Simpsons references. Some of his comparisons are more perplexing than illuminating. For example, there’s got to be a better metaphor to explain a Higgs field than a frog in a Bundt cake pan. Overall, however, I think Greene does a fine job of explicating extremely complex concepts in everyday terms a layman can understand.

This book was published in 2004, and there have no doubt been discoveries and advances in physics in the two decades since. Even so, when nonscientists read about those advances in publications like Scientific American or Science News, you’re still going to need to know everything that came before, from Newton through the string theorists, in order to comprehend those articles. This book provides you with that basis of understanding. After reading The Fabric of the Cosmos, you will still likely be confused on some matters of time, space, and quantum physics. That’s the nature of the subject matter. In order for Greene to thoroughly explain how all this works, the book would have to be thousands of pages long. As an overview of physics at the dawn of the 21st century, however, it is unlikely you’ll find a better guide than this, unless it’s one of Greene’s more recent books.