My Goodreads Review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is David Deutsch’s plea to the scientific world to tear down the separation between theory and their own worldviews and truly own the picture of reality that modern physics has painted for us. He begs that we take our theories seriously as fundamental paradigms and not set them aside as interesting little quirks of Nature. In particular, he makes a solid case for embracing the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics (given my greenness on this subject, I’m reserving judgment until further notice).
His central idea, however, is a draft of an approach to a theory of everything that melds quantum theory, the theory of evolution, epistemology, and the theory of computation.
As for quantum theory, this was book provides one of the best popular introductions to quantum theory and quantum computation that I’ve seen. Certain ideas (such as the concept of parallel computation in the multiverse) only clicked for me after hearing them from Deutsch.
As for epistemology, Deutsch commands a knowledge of his contemporary scientific philosophy rivaling that of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein – men who were not afraid to dabble in the “softer” science of epistemology. He drives home the mistakes of induction-based scientific philosophies and presents the case for adopting a Popperian philosophy, emphasizing the relative problem-solving efficiency of a theory as criterion for its success. The reading can be a bit rough though if you’ve never been introduced to Kuhn, Popper, or other scientific philosophers before. I’d highly recommend reading some of their works before picking up Fabric of Reality (I had read some Kuhn but no Popper and wish I had).
His introductions to evolution and computation are noble efforts but again, this book is much richer if you have a bit of a background in these subjects. I’d particularly recommend Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene as a prerequisite for Deutsch’s discussions.
I was extremely intrigued by the seeds of a multiverse theory of knowledge that Deutsch planted as well, something I intend to further explore as I gain more background in quantum theory.
Given the radical and rigorous nature of this book’s explorations, I found Deutsch’s use of chapter summaries and glossaries extremely helpful in structuring my reading. I think this feature is an excellent take-away for any science writer.
All things considered however, the fact that this book is not stand-alone and can be confusing at times without the proper background lead me to grant it only three stars.
Tags: computer science · evolution · physics · quantum theoryNo Comments
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