Reading:
I forgot when I started reading this. Finished April 11, 2005.
Part of the reason for the gap is that I interviewed at Graceland University for
a teaching position in Physics.
Specs
Morris, Richard, Achilles in the Quantum Universe: The
Definitive History of Infinity,
published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, New York, in 1997.
This is from the Central Resource Library. This is a non-fiction
book. I also have a copy in my personal library.
Overview
This book attempts to be a popular presentation of Quantum
Mechanics by a person who is obviously into this field. It does not
contain much actual math, or really justifications for the results,
just a statement of what some people think might be the case. To be
honest, it blurs the line between science and science fiction,
particularly when he begins to talk about cosmology.
Unfortunately, other than what I consider wild speculation this
book really didn't contain any new information. I will give the
author credit in that in one chapter he acknowledged that some of the
more speculative theories really are probably not true.
The author never acknowledges that much of the speculation is
irrelevant. That is, if something cannot show itself through actual
observation, then it is possible that its truth is irrelevant. This
is in line with the observation some people have made that "science"
should only be interested in methods of explaining and predicting
observations. Religion deals with truth. He hint at this later
observation when he mentions in the last chapter about how some
people could take the wild speculation of the physicists and use them
as a "proof" for God.
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