Imperfect creation

In this lucid and brilliant narrative, Gleiser guides us through the cutting-edge science that instigated his own transformation from unifier to questioner—a fascinating scientific quest that led him to a new understanding of what it is to be human.

For millennia, shamans and philosophers, atheists and religious people, artists and scientists have tried to make sense of our existence by suggesting that everything is connected and that a mysterious Oneness connects us to the rest of the universe. People go to temples, churches, monasteries, and synagogues to pray to the various divine incarnations of this Oneness.

In a strikingly similar way, scientists claim that behind the apparent complexity of nature lies a simpler underlying reality. In its modern version, this "Theory of Everything" would unite, in a single framework, the physical laws governing everything from the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles to galaxies and the universe as a whole. But despite the valiant efforts of many brilliant minds, the Theory of Everything remains elusive. The universe is not elegant. It is a glorious creative chaos.

By overturning more than 25 centuries of scientific thought, award-winning physicist Marcelo Gleiser argues that the search for a Theory of Everything is fundamentally misguided and analyzes the profound implications this ideological shift has for humanity. All evidence points to a scenario in which everything emerges from fundamental imperfections, primordial asymmetries in matter and time, cataclysmic accidents at the dawn of life on Earth, and errors in the duplication of the genetic code. Imbalance fuels creation. Without asymmetries and imperfections, we wouldn't be here: the universe would be nothing but radiation.

Imperfect Creation proposes nothing less than a new "humanocentrism" capable of reflecting our position in the order of the universe. All life, particularly intelligent life, is a rare and precious accident. The unplanned complexity of human beings is all the more beautiful for its improbability. It is time for science to abandon the old aesthetic that says perfection is beautiful and that holds that "beauty is truth." It is time to look at the world with new eyes, without centuries of monotheistic baggage.