The Cosmic Dance: Science Discovers the Mysterious Harmony of the Universe by Giuseppe Del Re, Foreword by Thomas F. Torrance (Templeton Foundation) focuses on a new worldview, emerging from the science of the last decades of the second millennium. Its metaphor is the cosmic dance, or the harmony existing between systems that are so strongly interdependent that they behave as a single entity. This dance image hints at a general, evolving pattern in which all objects in the universe participate-like the ordered chaos of an African open-air market. Some of the chapters discuss the nature of processes in the universe, including chaos and chance in the game of life. The reconciliation of variety and unity are addressed in reference to the space-time continuum and the unified field of relativity theory. Del Re continues the investigation into an exploration of the origins of freedom and ethics, suggesting that science indicates that the human species may have a specific task in the universe: building a bridge between matter and spirit. Del Re ponders alchemy, the significance of symbols, and the meaning of the soul. Woven throughout a variety of esoteric and scientific inquiries is the underlying sense of the unifying principles of science and a spiritual outlook. The questions raised are issues that will be discussed by an emerging network of scientists and spiritual seekers, and this book will add a valued and informed perspective to these conversations. The Cosmic Dance is a playful book that takes a broad view of the subject of science and religious aspiration. Del Re wants us to keep an open and playful imagination about how we think and experiment with the universe. The book may please some who are naturally inclined to an esoteric science and irritate material reductionists if there are really very many of them left. If there are this book is to braod in its humanistic reach to engage them to reconsider their entrenchment. For the rest of us The Cosmic Dance is a pleasure to read. "This book is intended to take you on a voyage through the main ideas and discoveries of contemporary science, from physics to biology; a voyage aimed at finding out how the wonders the scientists have discovered can contribute to a wholesome personal outlook on life and the universe. "The times are over when our voyage would have been a royal visit to the empire which human ingenuity has conquered for our welfare and pleasure; it will be a humble and patient search for the meaning of the greatest concepts of science in the context of poetry, history, and philosophy. We shall be guided in our exploration by an ancient, recently revived idea: that all there is participates as if it were in a great harmonious Dance." from the preface.

The Cosmic Dance: Science Discovers The Mysterious Harmony Of The Universe explores how the image and metaphor of dancing helps us come to terms with evolution, randomness, irreversibility, and the emergence of new information -- including the conception of the universe as a complex system made up of complex systems. From atoms to planets, solar systems to galaxies, and the choreographed evolution of ecosystems and human beings, The Cosmic Dance views such phenomena as interacting wholes, and apparently chaotic systems can work well. Author Guiseppe Del Re examines the nature of complexity, order, and organization while referencing scientists, philosophers, and literature. The Cosmic Dance examines the place of man in the scheme of things, including human ethics, morals, mind, soul, and psyche. A fascinating, informative, and at times inspiring blend of philosophy and science, The Cosmic Dance engages both the mind and the imagination that will be read with deep interest by scholarship and the non-specialist general reader alike.