Publisher’s Blurb

The Language of Symmetry is a re-assessment of the structure and reach of symmetry, by an interdisciplinary group of specialists from the arts, humanities and sciences at Oxford University, It explores, amongst other topics

Order and chaos in the formation of planetary systems

Entropy and symmetry in physics

Group theory, fractals, and self-similarity

Symmetrical structures in western classical music

How biological systems harness disorder to create order

The book aims to open up the scope of interdisciplinary work in the study of symmetry and is intended for scholars of any background — whether it be science, arts, or philosophy.

Editors

Benedict Rattigan is a writer, and he is Director of the Schweitzer Institute, a think-tank that promotes the ethic of ‘reverence for life’ through educational programmes, community outreach projects, a peer-reviewed journal, and university conferences.

Denis Noble held the Burdon-Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology, Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford in 1984-2004, and was appointed Professor Emeritus and Co-Director of Computational Physiology. Professor Noble is one of the pioneers of systems biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart. He is one of the founders of the new field of systems biology and is the author of the first popular science book on the subject, The Music of Life (2006).

Afiq Hatter is a science writer and the owner of the blog simple-salad.ghost.io. He primarily writes about theoretical physics and its connections with economics and philosophy. He is a recent graduate of Mathematics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and was formerly a quantitative trader at Morgan Stanley.