This is the very dense attempt by a Johns Hopkins classics professor to help the reader understand modern theoretical quantum physics, with all the nonsensical implications of what that entails, such as the deduction that if the moon is not seen, it ceases to exist.
The pages are almost equallly divided between the German existentialist philosopher Immanuel Kant, the Argentinian poet/philosopher /activist Jorge Borge, and the German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg. In spite of reading three of his books, I have to confess to still finding Kant unintelligible, but I did get a little closer to understanding the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. I did not understand much of Borge’s contribution to the field.
The discussion is not confined to those three and includes many others including ancient philosophers such as Plato and Anticus Beothius, contemporaries like Neils Bohr and Erwin Shroedinger. Theology is not neglected with discussion of the nature of the trinity in the Niceane Creed, and of course Albert Einstein contributes in a major way. Free will à la Sam Harris’s is trashed.
The complex density of this book is best illustrated by a couple quotes:
« .. the circumference of a circle first increases with the radius, until the circumference of the universe is reached and it gradually decreases thereafter for increasing value of the radius until it reaches zero.. »
« To be ultimately responsible for how one is in any mental respect, one must have brought it about that one is the way one is in that respect. One must have consciously and explicitly to be the way one is in that respect and one must have succeeded in bringing it about in that respect. » Confused yet?
I gave up on understanding particle entangelment but sorta , kinda understand the theoretical concept of multiverses. I may have understood 10 % of the rest of this book.
1.5/5
Thanks, The Economist and Goodreads.
The Passionate Reader 