Foreword xi
Preface 1999 xv
Preface xvii
acknowledgements xix
I Symmetry and Design 1
1. In Search of Beauty 3
2. Symmetry and Simplicity 8
3. The Far Side of the Mirror 22
II Einstein's Legacy, 49
4. Marriage of Time and Space 51
5. A Happy Thought 76
6. Symmetry Dictates Design 95
III Into The Limelight 101
7. Where the action is not 103
8. The lady and the Tyger 113
9. Learning to Read the Great Book 122
10. Symmetry Triumphs 133
IV To Know His Thoughts 151
11. The Eightfold Path in the Forest of the Night 153
12. The Revenge of Art 185
13. The Ultimate Design Problem 210
14. The Unity of Forces 228
15. The Rise of Hubris 255
16. The Mind of the Creator 275
Afterword 285
Appendix to Chapter 9 297
Appendix to the Afterword 301
Notes 321
Index 345

An engaging exploration of beauty in physics, with a foreword by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose
The concept of symmetry has widespread manifestations and many diverse applications-from architecture to mathematics to science. Yet, as twentieth-century physics has revealed, symmetry has a special, central role in nature, one that is occasionally and enigmatically violated. Fearful Symmetry brings the incredible discoveries of the juxtaposition of symmetry and asymmetry in contemporary physics within everyone's grasp. A. Zee, a distinguished physicist and skillful expositor, tells the exciting story of how contemporary theoretical physicists are following Einstein in their search for the beauty and simplicity of Nature. Animated by a sense of reverence and whimsy, Fearful Symmetry describes the majestic sweep and accomplishments of twentieth-century physics-one of the greatest chapters in the intellectual history of humankind.

A. Zee is professor of physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books include Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell and Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell (both Princeton). Roger Penrose is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the bestselling author, with Stephen Hawking, of The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton). He is the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at the University of Oxford.