Roger Penrose is one of the most creative and original mathematical physicists in Britain. This remarkable book is the result of many decades of reflection on our scientific understanding of the physical universe. We have discovered some major things about the nature of reality over the past three hundred years. First, everything in the world around us, including ourselves, is made up of identical material particles with regular properties which obey physical laws. Second, these physical laws can be described well using mathematical equations, giving us the ability to make accurate predictions of the way things will be in the future and the way they were in the past. How this can be so is the topic of The Road to Reality. It also contains a deeply thought-out critique of much that is happening in present-day theoretical physics.

LRB 26 January 2006 | PDF Download