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| Preface: Knowledge and Wisdom | |
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| Prologue: The Question | |
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| Is The Universe Describable? Laws, Principles, Theories and Models | |
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| Grounds for Debate | |
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| "Zapomnyat" and "Zapomniec"; A Preliminary Contemplation on the True Nature of "Theory" | |
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| The Transient Nature of All Things; The Preliminary Contemplation Continued | |
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| The Metaphysics of Laws and Principles Is Briefly Described | |
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| A Practical Exercise: Are Principles More Sacred Than Laws? | |
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| The Confusion of Models with Reality | |
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| Other Modes of Perception | |
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| A True Story | |
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| A Comparison of Meditative Experiences with Experimental Physics | |
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| In Which the First Debates Are Summarized | |
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| Is Nature Unreasonably Mathematical? Mathematics, Theories and Reality | |
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| The Question | |
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| The Conventional Wisdom of Physicists | |
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| Is Mathematics Real? | |
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| Is God a Mathematician? The Age of the Claim Is Revealed | |
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| A Short Meditation on the Alliance Between Jungians and Physicsts | |
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| A Contemplation: Does Physics Rediscover Preexisting Mathematics? Are There Mathematical Concepts Not Used in Physics? | |
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| The Four Faces of Approximation | |
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| The Degenerate Description of Reality | |
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| Are There Physical Things That Mathematics Cannot Describe? | |
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| A Practical Exercise: Is Music Unreasonably Mathematical? | |
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| In Which the Second Debates Are Summarized | |
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| Is the World Symmetrical? Friezes, Particles and Groups | |
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| The Question | |
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| Is There Symmetry in Art? | |
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| Is There Truth in Beauty? | |
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| A Short Discourse on the Mathematical Description of Beauty | |
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| The Theoreticians Reveal the Symmetries of Particles | |
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| The Symmetrists Show That the Symmetry of Forces Is No Different | |
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| Unification Without Unification | |
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| Countless Manifestations | |
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| But Do Quarks Exist? | |
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| Are the Laws of Nature Symmetric? | |
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| Is Motion Symmetry? | |
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| Symmetry Without Symmetry | |
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| A Contemplation: Symmetry Is Asymmetry | |
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| A Practical Exercise: Is Symmetry in the Eye of the Beholder? | |
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| In Which the Third Debates Are Summarized | |
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| Why Do Things Happen? Causality, Synchronicity and All That | |
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| The Question | |
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| Are There Causes? In Which Philosophers Befog One's Mind | |
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| In Which Physicists Befog One's Mind | |
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| Some Fraudulent Causes Are Unmasked | |
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| An Argument on the Teleological Nature of the Action | |
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| The Academicians Contemplate Action at a Distance | |
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| The Attraction of Advanced Effects Leads the Academicians to Synchronicity | |
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| What Is Synchronicity? | |
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| What Does Synchronicity Have to Do with the East? | |
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| Can Quantum Mechanics Explain Synchronicity? | |
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| A Practical Exercise: Can Coincidences Be Computed? | |
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| In Which the Fourth Debates Are Summarized | |
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| Does Time Go Forward? Past and Future | |
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| The Question | |
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| In Which the Paradox Is Clarified | |
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| Is Entropy Possible? | |
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| Boltzmann's Solution Is Presented and Viciously Attacked | |
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| The Never-ending Debate | |
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| The Cosmological Solution Is Disputed | |
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| The Gibbs Branch Reveals an Insidious Assumption | |
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| The Thermodynamic Solution, Which Also Comes under Fire | |
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| Does the Brussels Approach Explain Quantum Mechanics? | |
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| The Other Arrows of Time Are Listed and Briefly Contemplated | |
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| A Practical Exercise: Does Chaos Exist? | |
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| Other Conceptions of Time Are Contrasted and Compared | |
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| In Which the Fifth Debates Are Summarized | |
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| Why Is There Left and Right? Chirality, Complexity and Emergent Properties | |
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| The Question | |
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| A Contemplation of the World's Handedness | |
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| How Did It Happen? | |
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| A Practical Exercise--Speculation Rampant | |
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| Chirality Paves the Way for Complexity and Emergent Properties | |
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| In Which the Sixth Debates Are Summarized | |
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| Is the Universe Weird? Quantum Mechanics | |
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| The Question | |
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| Fin de Siecle Puzzles | |
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| In Which the Quantum Nature of Light Is Revealed (Again) | |
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| In Which the First of the Paradoxes Are Interpreted | |
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| Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle | |
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| The Measurement Problem | |
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| Is Quantum Mechanics Nonlocal? | |
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| In Which the Meaning of Nonlocal Is Obscured | |
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| A Practical Exercise--The Fractured Debate | |
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| Universes Merge? | |
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| In Which the Seventh Debates Are Summarized | |
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| Is There an Answer? Theories of Everything | |
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| The Question | |
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| A Recontemplation on the Concept of Unification, and on Supersymmetry | |
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| The Difficulties of Quantum Gravity Are Pondered | |
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| A Meditation on String Theory, Its Success and Failures | |
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| A Practical Exercise: The Reader and the Authors Contemplate String Theory | |
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| The Discussion Widens into an Argument over the Point of Theories of Everything | |
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| The Existence of Other Theories of Everything Is Revealed | |
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| In Which the Eighth Debates Are Summarized | |
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| How Did We Get Here? Cosmology | |
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| General Relativity and the Standard Model | |
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| The Question | |
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| A Contemplation on the Meanings and Difficulties of Cosmology | |
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| Before the Big Bang Is Reached, an Argument Erupts over General Relativity. Is Space Curved? And Other Matters | |
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| Four Reasons to Believe the Big Bang | |
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| The Standard Model Is Not the Universe | |
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| A Perplexed Meditation on Two Celebrated Cosmological Conundrums | |
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| Inflation, Quantum Cosmology and Quantum Theology | |
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| In Which Inflation Is Described and Vigorously Debated | |
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| At Last the Epoch of Quantum Gravity Is Reached and the Universe Is Created from Nothing | |
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| A Practical Exercise: In Which the Authors Ponder the Nature of Time | |
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| Meditation on Cosmologist-Theologians | |
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| In Which the Ninth Debates Are Summarized | |
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| What Do You Mean? Metaphors, Analogies, Culture Wars | |
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| The Question | |
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| A Stroll Through the Marketplace | |
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| A Recent Controversy | |
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| Are Metaphors from Science Valuable? | |
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| The Use of Analogy Comes Under Inspection | |
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| Is Science Relative? | |
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| A Practical Exercise: Summarizing the Debates While Escping the Academy | |
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| Supplemental Debate | |
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| Can We Make Any Money Off This? Applied Quantum Mechanics | |
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| The Question | |
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| The Sphinx and the Cat | |
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| Quantum Computation and Related Mysteries | |
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| Commentaries on the Debates | |
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| Index | |