Этот правый, левый мир

Martin Gardner "The New Ambidextrous Universe" 1990 year, 406 pages, 3,60 mb. DJVU

Scientific knowledge is like a continually expanding circle, but one that has no sharply defined perimeter. It is more like a cloud of beliefs with widely varying probabilities. At the center are convictions, such as the belief that the earth is round, that are "true" with a probability extremely close to 1.

Nobody knows if there is a limit to the cloud’s size. There is even disagreement over what it means to say a belief is true, false, probably true, or probably false. There is no technique by which precise probability values can be assigned. Nevertheless, everyone agrees on one thing: the cloud expands. There is some sense in which one is justified in saying that all the science Aristotle knew is an extremely small part of what is known today.

This steady expansion of scientific knowledge is one of the few aspects of human history — perhaps the only aspect—about which we can say dogmatically that genuine progress takes place. Moreover, the progress itself progresses. The expansion occurs with steadily increasing rapidity. We have, for example, learned more in the last ten years about the structure of matter than was learned in the two thousand years that followed Aristotle.

ISBN 0-7167-2092-2
ISBN 0-7167-2093-0 (pbk.)

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1. Зеркала 7
2. Лайнландия п Флатландия 13
3. Трехмерный мир 21
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4. Фокусы 31
5. Живопись, музыка и поэзия 37
6. Галактика, звезды и планеты 48
7. Растения и животные 56
8. Асимметрия у животных 67
9. Человеческое тело 74
10. Злополучное меньшинство 83
11. Кристаллы 89
12. Молекулы 102
13. Углерод 114
14. Живые молекулы 127
15. Происхождение жизни 137
16. Происхождение асимметрии 147
17. Четвертое измерение 152
18. Проблема «Озма» 168
19. Чему удивлялся Мах 177
20. Четность 193
21. Античастицы 204
22. Ниспровержение четности 219
23. Нейтрино 234
24. Мистер Сплит 243
24.Решена ли «Проблема Озма»? 255