Seth Lloyd, "Programming the Universe," Knopf, 2006He tries to explain everything of this universe including the origin based on information. In order to do that, he covers broad areas such as information theory, computational theory and quantum computing theory as well as physics, chemistry and biology... almost everything around me... :)
It's a really interesting book... and I learned a lot from it, though some parts are hard to get...
Anyway, my first thought right after wrapping it up is the Fourier series... Say, there is a function, f, in nature, then some basis functions can approximate it. If the number of basis functions goes infinite, the approximation approaches to the function f. In other words, if it is not infinite, it always has some error between the true function and the approximation. Interestingly, I feel like the 'infiniteness' belongs to kind of a supernatural being.
So, always, we have error to explain something, as long as we don't know the true shape. Even the general relativity theory has some errors to explain the true principle in the universe. (It is really really good approximation.) Finally, we never get to the true principle never.. but get to have a just approximation which is most plausible... I mean, the historical truth is totally hidden from scientists... forever.
This book tries to explain the universe in a new way, and it is really nice...
But still in my head I have stupid questions like "So what?" still confused...
- H. Choi
