The re-reading of the 'The Universe-View Odyssey' in english.

Prologue : Traveling through the Universe-View Odyssey on a ship called Physics

Homer's Odyssey is an epic poem about Odysseus' return from Troy to his hometown of Ithaca after the Trojan War. Odysseus' return was a long and arduous journey of 10 years. The word odyssey, which refers to today's long wanderings and adventurous journeys, comes from here. So, the title of the book 'Odyssey' is a trip to explore the Universe-View Odyssey.

Departure is the mathematical geometric  Universe-View of ancient Greece Pythagoras and Plato. From here through the scientific revolution, Einstein's relativistic cosmology, the two pillars of modern physics, and Nils Bohr's quantum cosmology. It's an odyssey, a long and difficult journey of over 2,500 years. The 'Universe-View' refers to a systematic view of the universe from the perspective of science. If people have a logical basis and have thought, "What is the universe?" for a long time, it can be called the  Universeview of the time. For example, Ptolemy's celestial theory or Copernicus' geographical theory is a representative  Universeview of ancient and medieval times.

This  Universeview is compared to the wordview. The worldview refers to a unified and systematic view of human natures or human existence. The universeview is a scientific view of the universe, and the worldview is a philosophical view of humans in the universe. But sometimes the universeview and the worldview are used in the same sense.

Science is a means of recognizing the universe and humans. Just as Galilei recognized the universe as he observed the celestial body with a telescope, mankind sees the universe anew as a "tenscope" called science. Einstein's theory of relativity is a new telescope with very powerful performance from this point of view. Quantum theory, which was created around the same time as relativity, opened up a completely different view of space than relativity as a theoretical tool such as the microscope that allowed us to look into the micro-world. This is very profound and perhaps confusing. No one can deny that the emergence of relativity and quantum theory has greatly expanded the horizons of human perception compared to the previous era.

In college, I was asked by a friend who was full of ambition, "What happens to the universe when humans disappear?" 'Universe-view Odyssey' is also my intellectual journey to find the answer to this question. And as you'll see at the end of the journey, here's my answer to that question, according to the new characteristics of space and the relational structure of the universe that quantum theory reveals.

"The disappearance of humans does not mean that the universe disappears, but we know immediately that one person has disappeared."

<Cho Songhyun / Author>

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