The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything - Hardcover

Beautifully composed . . . This elegant treatise will inspire readers who relish a philosophical approach to science and travel.-- "Library Journal" "Altogether excellent."-- "Brain Pickings" "Part memoir, part popular science blog, with interludes of closely guided casting in England, Italy, and Iceland, Gleiser, like many of us, explores angling as a "conduit to the outer world of natural phenomena and the inner world of the self."-- "Fly Fishing & Tying Journal"

Marcelo Gleiser has had a passion for science and fishing since he was a boy growing up on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Now a world-famous theoretical physicist with hundreds of scientific articles and several books of popular science to his credit, he felt it was time to connect with nature in less theoretical ways. After seeing a fly-fishing class on the Dartmouth College green, he decided to learn to fly-fish, a hobby, he says, that teaches humility. In The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected, Gleiser travels the world to scientific conferences, fishing wherever he goes. At each stop, he ponders how in the myriad ways physics informs the act of fishing; how, in its turn, fishing serves as a lens into nature's inner workings; and how science engages with questions of meaning and spirituality, inspiring a sense of mystery and awe of the not yet known. Personal and engaging, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected is a scientist's tribute to nature, an affirmation of humanity's deep connection with and debt to Earth, and an exploration of the meaning of existence, from atom to trout to cosmos.