The Random Universe

“We don’t live in a clockwork universe; the real world is messy and imperfectly predictable. Andrew Jaffe’s delightful book shows us that randomness can be just as beautiful as rigidity.”—Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe 1: Space, Time, and Motion and The Biggest Ideas in the Universe 2: Quanta and Fields“Andrew Jaffe demystifies the role of probability and uncertainty in the scientific process, guiding readers through the logic that underpins inference and discovery. An essential read for anyone curious about how we come to know what we know in science.”—Priyamvada Natarajan, Joseph S. & Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Yale University, and author of Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos“Andrew Jaffe’s fascinating mission here is a profound examination of our fundamental beliefs about how the Universe works. Shockingly, he shows how uncertainty is at the root of every physical law.”—Sir Brian May, musician, songwriter, and astrophysicist“Astrophysics is the science of events that happened long ago and therefore about which we can only learn indirectly and interpret through rigorous theory. Astrophysicist Andrew Jaffe has written a fascinating book about how we know what we know, and how we express our current knowledge of the world.”—Andrew Gelman, Columbia University

Andrew H. Jaffe is professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Imperial College London and director of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology. He lives in London, UK.