Il sogno di Democrito

The development of science throughout the history of mankind, on a quest to discover what the world is made of.

The book moves from the reflections of the ancients to the great intellectual adventure in search of the atom, all the way to the modern description of how matter is made, how it interacts and the laws that govern it.

We go from Democritus’ atomism to that of the 19th century with the discovery of the electron and the atomic nucleus, all the way to the revolution brought in by quantum mechanics that would eventually lead to quantum field theory and the discovery of antimatter. It is a journey interwoven with scientific and philosophical themes through the juxtaposition between vacuum and matter, continuous and discrete, part and whole, wave and particle, chance and necessity.