This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works

The book consists of over a hundred essays on the writers' favourite theories. As is usual with such works, the various essays range from 'really exciting' to 'Why did they bother?' An amazing number start out with, 'I would say Darwin, but someone else has certainly said that already, so ...' The essays are all short, so you don't waste a lot of time on the uninteresting ones, and the good ones explain their theory without a lot of extraneous material, so you get a quick look to decide whether or not any specific theory is worth following up. There has been some attempt to group essays about similar subjects, which is quite helpful.

I love the fact that the Peter Principle made it in.

Just don't try to read the whole thing through in show more one indigestible lump. I read this in German, and reading it in translation didn't make it any easier. show less

This is a book about the state of science today. As is the nature of these things, some of the theories are more deep, more elegant and more beautiful than others. The stand out entries, however, really do jolt the system with wonder and the book as a whole is like a shot in the arm of reason and objectivity. It is a workout for the intelligence and a primer for current thinking. It's also fun showing people the cover.

I got bogged down on the first of the short works on quantum physics, time-space continua, etc.. I prepared to assign this 2 stars and promptly abandon it. But the essays got more and more palatable thanks to the more accessible topics in biology, psychology, social science, evolution, etc. Towards the end, I didn't want it to end!

Each year Edge.org asks contributors a question. The question for 2012 was "What is your favourite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" This is a compilation of the answers, varying in length from a couple of lines to three or four pages.

Always interesting. Some answers were things I vaguely knew about but certainly not well enough to be able to explain. Some answers I'd never thought about. Some answers were way over my head. I'll definitely be looking out for other compilations of answers to Edge questions.

Brockman's Edge question for 2012 was "“WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?" and this collection has some delightful answers, a few head-scratchers, and quite a lot of enlightening essays. A number of commenters complained about redundancies, but I see them as reinforcement of great explanations.

This book is a collection of answers to the 2012 edge.org question; "What is your favorite deep beautiful and elegant explanation of how the world works?"

It's pretty interesting, and a lot of people thought of Darwin and his mechanism for evolution. Also included was the Higgs Mechanism, how people see things, the power of simplicity to make complexity and other stuff.

It wasn't really challenging to read, but it was still pretty good.

Many interesting ideas on various sciences.Should probably be sampled over a decent period of time rather than read one after another.