Read On

Robert Pack's latest book, Before It Vanishes: A Packet forProfessor Pagels (David R. Godine, 1989), was inspired by two brilliant books by the physicist and philosopher Heinz R. Pagels. Pagels was a rare author who wrote two readable descriptions of the physical universe before he died last year. Perfect Symmetry: The Search for theBeginning of Time (Simon and Schuster, 1985) describes the cosmos as a thoroughly messy place that has achieved "the stability of perfect disorder."The Cosmic Code:Quantum Physics as the Language ofNature (Simon and Schuster, 1982) is scientific prose at its most poetic.

Pagels here first coined an expression that is now the favorite of physicists: "quantum weirdness." Both books should be in the library of every curious non-scientist.