Indice: Acknowledgments. Preface. Introduction. Pt. 1.: 1. Newton gets it completely wrong 2. I believe. Pt. 2.: 3. Thomas Aquinas versus Neil Armstrong 4. The second law 5. Predicting catastrophe 6. From Newton to De Sade: the partial triumph of reason 7. From Rousseau to Blake: the revolt against reason. Pt. 3.: Lodestone, amber, and lightning 9. Belief and action. Pt. 4.: 10. The demise of alchemy 11. The nineteenth century 12. The material trinity: the atom 13. The stuff of existence 14. Scipio's dream. Pt. 5.: 15. Making waves 16. The ubiquity of motion 17. Energy 18. Entropy: intimations of mortality 19. Chaos. Pt. 6.: 20. The slow birth of biology 21. In a monastery garden 22. Evolution 23. The descent of man 24. The gene machine 25. The lords of nature? 26. Life: the molecular battle 27. The origin of life? Take your choise. Pt. 7.: 28. The inexplicable quantum 29. News ways of thinking 30. The land of paradox 31. The elementary particles. Part. 8.: 32. Relativity 33. Cosmology 34. The cosmos and peeping Tom 35. The impossibility of creation. Pt. 9.: 36. The tree of death 37. What the devil does it all mean?. Pt. 10.: 38. The future. Annotated bibliography. Index
