In this lively, thought-provoking book, Hossenfelder takes on the biggest questions in physics: Does the past still exist? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? She lays out how far physicists are on the way to answering these questions, where the current limits are, and what questions might well remain unanswerable forever.
Not always, though, have they stayed on the scientific side of the debate. Over the last century, physicists have learned a lot about which spiritual ideas are still compatible with the laws of nature. Science and religion have the same roots, and they still tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? The area of science that is closest to answering these questions is physics. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation. On the other hand, the idea that the universe itself is conscious is difficult to rule out entirely.Īccording to Sabine Hossenfelder, it is not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy have become the go-to explanations of alternative healers, or that people believe their deceased grandmother is still alive because of quantum mechanics. Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. Anyone capable of bridging the concerns of the human world and the baffling complexities of physics has earned the right to be indulged a little.A contrarian scientist wrestles with the big questions that modern physics raises, and what physics says about the human condition. Hossenfelder is sometimes a little too opinionated, the reader will quickly forgive her. an informed and entertaining guide to what science can and cannot tell us. Hossenfelder breaks up her text with four interviews with physicists to provide 'other voices.' Their main effect is to confirm stereotypes of eccentricity. Hossenfelder doesn’t apply the distinction between unscientific and ascientific consistently, sometimes giving both labels to the same idea.
The most surprising and interesting feature of the book is the claim that many of her physicist peers are as guilty of bringing speculation and belief into their scientific thinking as theologians and New Age mystics. She is less persuasive when she encroaches on philosophical territory, brusquely brushing aside the possibility of free will.
Hossenfelder can mostly avoid straying beyond science because the questions she addresses are more metaphysical than existential.
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