What is real?
"Quantum mechanics is humanity's finest scientific achievement. It explains why the sun shines and how your eyes can see. It's the theory behind the LEDs in your phone and the nuclear hearts of space probes. Every physicist agrees quantum physics is spectacularly successful. But ask them what quantum physics means, and the result will be a brawl. At stake is the nature of the Universe itself. What does it mean for something to be real? What is the role of consciousness in the Universe? And do quantum rules apply to very small objects like electrons and protons, but not us? In What is Real?, Adam Becker brings to vivid life the brave researchers whose quest for the truth led them to challenge Bohr: David Bohm, who picked up Einstein's mantle and sought to make quantum mechanics deterministic, all while being hounded by the forces of McCarthyism; Hugh Everett, who argued that everything, big and small, must be governed by the same rules; and John Bell, who went to great lengths to eradicate the power of the god-like observer from the core of quantum physics. And they paid dearly, their reputations, careers, and sometimes lives ruined completely. But history has been kinder to them than their contemporaries were. As Becker shows, the brave intellectual giants have inspired a growing army of physicists and philosophers intent both on making a philosophically more satisfying theory of the universe and a more useful one as well.
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6recommend
10mentions
10people
2018–2026years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I have always liked the way that this paper frames the distinction and tension between the feeling of subjective experience and the "detached" rational scientific descriptive perspective that purports to be outside of that experience.
What is Real by Adam Becker was a fun foray into why this is so in (some) modern science philosophy as well - there's some desire to say that there isn't a "there" there when we talk about the world, just stuff. I'm probably with Alan Watts on the whole thing, that we are in some sense local aspects of a larger consciousness pretending it isn't so, and the hard work done by detached, disembodied perspectives like the scientific descriptive one are more and more steps to an unfolding game.
- I found a Bohm through the excellent book What is Real by Adam Becker. It was one of the first books that advocated the philosophy of science that I’d encountered, and it was fascinating.
Warning: If you’re a huge fan of Bohr and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, you may not enjoy it as much.
- > The Many World Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was rejected out of hand by scientists that were also religious
Do you have a reference for that? The Many Worlds interpretation was initially rejected by John Wheeler, Everett's Ph.D. advisor, under the influence of Neils Bohr, but I've never read anywhere that the motivation of the two was in any way religious.
The book What is Real? by Adam Becker has a good account of this history.
- I share many of your views, and so I think you will enjoy Jean Bricmont’s “Making Sense of Quantum Mechanics”. The book clarifies there is no reason to doubt the pilot wave interpretation, or Bohmian mechanics.
For a more popular account that delves into the personalities of the physicists involved, I also recommend Adam Becker’s “What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics”.
Both books came to me via the reading list at https://bohmian-mechanics.net.
- "What is real?" by Adam Becker. It doesn't touch much on general relativity if you are interested specifically in that, but it's a great read and gives you a bit of perspective how "modern" science works (I mean before the Internet, and back when we were actually moving forward..)
> Perhaps it's because matters can get quite political and subjective at that level.
Much more than I would have thought.
- "What is Real" by Adam Becker. He presents the sociology of why the Copenhagen interpretation persisted for so long, despite strong opposition early on and refutations of Von Neumann's work on why it had to be true.
Once into the modern world, he provides an overview of current interpretations and their experimental support.
Becker's book is, I think, the best lay person's explanation of the problems QM was invented to solve, the Copenhagen Interpretation itself, and several of the more modern interpretations.
Great, mind bending read.
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