{"id":31663,"date":"2016-03-26T00:27:35","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T00:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/?p=31663"},"modified":"2016-03-26T00:27:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T00:27:35","slug":"a-beautiful-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/a-beautiful-question\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beautiful Question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just completed the book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1594205264\">A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature&#8217;s Deep Design<\/a> by Nobel Prize winning physicist <a href=\"http:\/\/frankwilczek.com\/\">Frank Wilczek<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This book is a long meditation on a single question:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nDoes the world embody beautiful ideas?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Our Question may seem like a strange thing to ask. Ideas are one thing, physical bodies are quite another. What does it mean to &#8220;embody&#8221; an &#8220;idea&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Embodying ideas is what artists do. Starting from visionary conceptions, artists produce physical objects (or quasi-physical products, like musical scores that unfold into sound). Our Beautiful Question then is close to this one:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIs the world a work of art?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>To answer this question Wilczek takes us on a thoroughly enjoyable journey from Pythagoras to Supersymmetry and at the end of that journey his answer &#8220;&#8230;is a resounding Yes!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Does the world embody beautiful ideas, and if it does, what are we to make of that?<\/p>\n<p>Are these questions worth asking?<\/p>\n<p>Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just completed the book A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature&#8217;s Deep Design by Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek. This book is a long meditation on a single question: Does the world embody beautiful ideas? Our Question may seem like &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/a-beautiful-question\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1045,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1045"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}