Books in Brief: Other Worlds

Other Worlds, by Paul Davies (Simon & Schuster, 207 pp., $11.95).

Going by what they claim to know about the behavior of electrons, quantum physicists quite willingly go out on a limb about the peculiarities of the universe. Some bizarre conclusions have resulted. Time might well stand still, they say. Person A, by scrambling Person B’s atomic makeup, could crimp B’s free will. Entire universes might be stacked one against the other like eggs in a basket. Professor Davies capitalizes on the shock value of the wilder quantum speculations. As in his Runaway Universe (1979), he piles revelation upon outlandish revelation in the opening pages with the promise that explanations will follow. They never really do. In fact, his attempt to justify the Uncertainty Principle does the theory more harm than good by revealing that the process of casting light at even the larger subatomic particles with the aim of taking their picture is like heaving bowling balls at marbles. The finished image is an array of fragments. If quantum physics is largely inaccessible to the senses, one wonders what, exactly, the physicists are measure ing. The Sufi story of the three blind men examining an elephant comes to mind. The first felt the trunk and announced an elephant was like a tree. The second, grasping the tail, concluded it resembled a snake. The third patted the side. “Like a rock,” he said. Each made an assumption about the whole based on just one aspect, a habit of mind the more misleading when the blind men are groping after galaxies.

PH

About the Author

Paul T. Hornak

Featured Tags

Other Worlds, by Paul Davies (Simon & Schuster, 207 pp., $11.95).

Going by what they claim to know about the behavior of electrons, quantum physicists quite willingly go out on a limb about the peculiarities of the universe. Some bizarre conclusions have resulted. Time might well stand still, they say. Person A, by scrambling Person B’s atomic makeup, could crimp B’s free will. Entire universes might be stacked one against the other like eggs in a basket. Professor Davies capitalizes on the shock value of the wilder quantum speculations. As in his Runaway Universe (1979), he piles revelation upon outlandish revelation in the opening pages with the promise that explanations will follow. They never really do. In fact, his attempt to justify the Uncertainty Principle does the theory more harm than good by revealing that the process of casting light at even the larger subatomic particles with the aim of taking their picture is like heaving bowling balls at marbles. The finished image is an array of fragments. If quantum physics is largely inaccessible to the senses, one wonders what, exactly, the physicists are measure ing. The Sufi story of the three blind men examining an elephant comes to mind. The first felt the trunk and announced an elephant was like a tree. The second, grasping the tail, concluded it resembled a snake. The third patted the side. “Like a rock,” he said. Each made an assumption about the whole based on just one aspect, a habit of mind the more misleading when the blind men are groping after galaxies.