Is there a number at the root of the universe? A primal number that everything in the world hinges on? This question exercised many great minds of the twentieth century, among them the groundbreaking physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Their obsession with the power of certain numbers including 137, which describes the atom s fine-structure constant and has great Kabbalistic significance led them to develop an unlikely friendship and to embark on a joint mystical quest reaching deep into medieval alchemy, dream interpretation, and the Chinese Book of Changes. 137 explores the profound intersection of modern science with the occult, but above all it is the tale of an extraordinary, fruitful friendship between two of the greatest thinkers of our times. Originally published in hardcover as Deciphering the Cosmic Number.

In recent decades, an exciting new art movement has emerged in which artists utilize and illuminate the latest advances in science. Some of their provocative creations--a live rabbit implanted with the fluorescent gene of a jellyfish, a gigantic glass-and-chrome sculpture of the Big Bang (pictured on the cover)--can be seen in traditional art museums and magazines, while others are being made by leading designers at Pixar, Google's Creative Lab, and the MIT Media Lab. In Colliding Worlds, Arthur I. Miller takes readers on a wild journey to explore this new frontier.

Miller, the author of Einstein, Picasso and other celebrated books on science and creativity, traces the movement from its seeds a century ago--when Einstein's theory of relativity helped shape the thinking of the Cubists--to its flowering today. Through interviews with innovative thinkers and artists across disciplines, Miller shows with verve and clarity how discoveries in biotechnology, cosmology, quantum physics, and beyond are animating the work of designers like Neri Oxman, musicians like David Toop, and the artists-in-residence at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

From NanoArt to Big Data, Miller reveals the extraordinary possibilities when art and science collide.

Since the Enlightenment, science has been seen as an objective, true method of explanation about the physical and mathematical laws that explain and govern the universe. The 20th Century has shown that science is also a human enterprise, informed by idealogy and other assumptions. In this book, distinguished historian and philosopher of science Arthur Miller examines these and other important questions about what and how we know about the world. Dr. Miller also discusses, in non-technical language, our current ideas about the nature of scientific thought and explanation, its relation to truth, and the relationship between scientific and common sense. Does science, in its historical claim as an exalted endeavor, stand above other human activities?

This volume contains proceedings from the International School of History of Science, Sixty-Two Years of Uncertainty: Historical Philosophical and Physical Inquiries into the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, convened at the Ettore Maj orana Centre for Scientific Culture, Erice, Sicily, 5-15 August 1989. In response to the high state of enth, usiasm from the sixty-one participants there were six to eight lectures each day, beginning at 9:00 AM and often ending at 7:00 PM. Vigorous discussions took place at every opportunity, even including the delightful excursions. The papers presented here are by the twelve invited lecturers (in some cases with coauthors) with a contribution from Philip Pearle. AU of us attending the conference express our appreciation to the exemplary staff of the Ettore Majorana Centre, and particularly to the Centre's Director, Professor Antonino Zichichi. for superb hospitality which made this conference a memorable intellectual and cultural experience. It is a pleasure to acknowledge financial support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Scientific Affairs Division.

An authority on creativity introduces us to AI-powered computers that are creating art, literature, and music that may well surpass the creations of humans.

Today's computers are composing music that sounds more Bach than Bach, turning photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night, and even writing screenplays. But are computers truly creative--or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers? In this book, Arthur I. Miller takes us on a tour of creativity in the age of machines.

Miller, an authority on creativity, identifies the key factors essential to the creative process, from the need for introspection to the ability to discover the key problem. He talks to people on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, encountering computers that mimic the brain and machines that have defeated champions in chess, Jeopardy , and Go. In the central part of the book, Miller explores the riches of computer-created art, introducing us to artists and computer scientists who have, among much else, unleashed an artificial neural network to create a nightmarish, multi-eyed dog-cat; taught AI to imagine; developed a robot that paints; created algorithms for poetry; and produced the world's first computer-composed musical, Beyond the Fence, staged by Android Lloyd Webber and friends.

But, Miller writes, in order to be truly creative, machines will need to step into the world. He probes the nature of consciousness and speaks to researchers trying to develop emotions and consciousness in computers. Miller argues that computers can already be as creative as humans--and someday will surpass us. But this is not a dystopian account; Miller celebrates the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence in art, music, and literature.

An authority on creativity introduces us to AI-powered computers that are creating art, literature, and music that may well surpass the creations of humans.

Today's computers are composing music that sounds more Bach than Bach, turning photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night, and even writing screenplays. But are computers truly creative--or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers? In this book, Arthur I. Miller takes us on a tour of creativity in the age of machines.

Miller, an authority on creativity, identifies the key factors essential to the creative process, from the need for introspection to the ability to discover the key problem. He talks to people on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, encountering computers that mimic the brain and machines that have defeated champions in chess, Jeopardy , and Go. In the central part of the book, Miller explores the riches of computer-created art, introducing us to artists and computer scientists who have, among much else, unleashed an artificial neural network to create a nightmarish, multi-eyed dog-cat; taught AI to imagine; developed a robot that paints; created algorithms for poetry; and produced the world's first computer-composed musical, Beyond the Fence, staged by Android Lloyd Webber and friends.

But, Miller writes, in order to be truly creative, machines will need to step into the world. He probes the nature of consciousness and speaks to researchers trying to develop emotions and consciousness in computers. Miller argues that computers can already be as creative as humans--and someday will surpass us. But this is not a dystopian account; Miller celebrates the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence in art, music, and literature.

This book provides a panoramic view from 1927-1938 of the development of a physical theory that has been on the cutting-edge of theoretical physics ever since P. A. M. Dirac's quantization of the electromagnetic field in 1927: quantum electrodynamics. Like the classic papers chosen for this volume, the introductory Frame-Setting Essay emphasizes conceptual transformations which carried physicists to the threshold of renormalization theory. The published papers and correspondence of Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac and Pauli provide a fascinating analysis of the meaning and structure of a scientific theory. This book goes beyond the historical and philosophical into current physics. Unavailability of English-language versions of certain key papers, some of which are provided in this book, has prevented their implications from being fully realized. Awareness of research from sixty years ago could well provide insights for future developments.

Miller analyzes Einstein's famous paper establishing the theory of relativity in the light of the intellectual struggles of physicists at the start of the 20th century: the interplay between physical theory and empirical data, the inertia of existing theories and interpretations, and the drive to the unification of the sciences. Since its original publication, this book has become a standard reference for the history and philosopy of science; it can equally well serve as a text in the history of ideas or of twentieth-century philosophy.