 First edition | |
| Author | Jeanette Winterson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Granta Books |
Publication date | 1997 |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | 1-86207-000-8 |
Gut Symmetries is a 1997 novel by the British literary writer Jeanette Winterson, exploring themes of human relationships and physics.
The book deals with a love triangle between Alice (a young British physicist), Jove (who is a male physicist at Princeton), and Jove's wife Stella; Alice has relationships with both of them. [1] [2] The title relates to the GUTs (grand unified theories) of quantum physics and cosmology, and the symmetries they involve. [3]
Audrey Bilver in the LA Times found it challenging but worth the effort, saying like a "kind of walking meditation, the book asks us to think our way toward insights that only our guts can know and to feel our way toward mysteries that lie beyond our analytical minds". [1] Bruce Bawer in the New York Times also found it a hard read despite its short length but praised it for Winterson's "fresh, vivid way of putting things". [2] Chris Kridler in the Baltimore Sun was less positive, noting that while it aimed for the gut it dazzled the intellect but went no further. [4]
In physics, the fundamental interactions or fundamental forces are the interactions that do not appear to be reducible to more basic interactions. There are four fundamental interactions known to exist:
In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. The Standard Model presently recognizes seventeen distinct particles—twelve fermions and five bosons. As a consequence of flavor and color combinations and antimatter, the fermions and bosons are known to have 48 and 13 variations, respectively. Among the 61 elementary particles embraced by the Standard Model number: electrons and other leptons, quarks, and the fundamental bosons. Subatomic particles such as protons or neutrons, which contain two or more elementary particles, are known as composite particles.
Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is any model in particle physics that merges the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces into a single force at high energies. Although this unified force has not been directly observed, many GUT models theorize its existence. If the unification of these three interactions is possible, it raises the possibility that there was a grand unification epoch in the very early universe in which these three fundamental interactions were not yet distinct.
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries the gravitational force. Thus, string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.
Jeanette Winterson is an English author.
Brian Randolph Greene is an American physicist. Greene was a physics professor at Cornell University from 1990–1995, and has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds. He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point.
Alan Harvey Guth is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is the Victor Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Along with Alexei Starobinsky and Andrei Linde, he won the 2014 Kavli Prize "for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation." Guth's research focuses on elementary particle theory and how particle theory is applicable to the early universe.
In algebraic geometry and theoretical physics, mirror symmetry is a relationship between geometric objects called Calabi–Yau manifolds. The term refers to a situation where two Calabi–Yau manifolds look very different geometrically but are nevertheless equivalent when employed as extra dimensions of string theory.
Theodore Bruce Bawer is an American-Norwegian writer. Born and raised in New York, he has been a resident of Norway since 1999 and became a citizen of Norway in 2024. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and a novelist and poet, who has also written about gay rights, Christianity, and Islam.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a novel by Jeanette Winterson published in 1985 by Pandora Press. It is a coming-of-age story about a lesbian who grows up in an English Pentecostal community. Key themes of the book include transition from youth to adulthood, complex family relationships, same-sex relationships, organised religion and the concept of faith.
Stanley L. Jaki was a Hungarian-born priest of the Benedictine order. From 1975 to his death, he was Distinguished University Professor at Seton Hall University, in South Orange, New Jersey.
Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence, succeeding Daljit Nagra. From 1 October 2019 until 30 September 2023, she was the Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) refers to the theoretical developments needed to explain the deficiencies of the Standard Model, such as the inability to explain the fundamental parameters of the standard model, the strong CP problem, neutrino oscillations, matter–antimatter asymmetry, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Another problem lies within the mathematical framework of the Standard Model itself: the Standard Model is inconsistent with that of general relativity, and one or both theories break down under certain conditions, such as spacetime singularities like the Big Bang and black hole event horizons.
Andrew Crumey is a novelist and former literary editor of the Edinburgh newspaper Scotland on Sunday. His works of literary fiction incorporate elements of speculative fiction, historical fiction, philosophical fiction and Menippean satire. Brian Stableford has called them "philosophical fantasies". The Spanish newspaper El Mundo called Crumey "one of the most interesting and original European authors of recent years."
Susie Orbach is a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic. Her first book, Fat is a Feminist Issue, analysed the psychology of dieting and over-eating in women, and she has campaigned against media pressure on girls to feel dissatisfied with their physical appearance. She was married to the author Jeanette Winterson. She is honoured in BBC'S 100 Women in 2013 and 2014. She was the therapist to Diana, Princess of Wales during the 1990s.
The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? is a 1993 popular science book by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon M. Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi.
Great Moments in Aviation is a 1994 British romantic drama film set on a 1950s passenger liner. The film follows Gabriel Angel, a young Caribbean aviator who falls in love with the forger Duncan Stewart on her journey to England. Stewart is pursued by his nemesis Rex Goodyear, and the group are supported by Dr Angela Bead and Miss Gwendolyn Quim, retired missionaries who become lovers during the voyage.
Neville Symington was a member of the Middle Group of British Psychoanalysts which argues that the primary motivation of the child is object-seeking rather than drive gratification. He published a number of books on psychoanalytic topics, and was President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society from 1999 to 2002.
While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within is a 2006 book by Bruce Bawer. It was Bawer's second book dealing with the issue of religious fundamentalism, following his earlier Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, a critique of fundamentalist Christianity published in 1998.
Audrey Bilger is the 16th and current president of Reed College. She is former vice president and dean of the college at Pomona College and previously was a professor of literature and faculty director of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College.
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