Episodic and disconnected, much of postmodern fiction mirrors the world as quantum theorists describe it, according to Samuel Chase Coale. In Quirks of the Quantum, Coale shows how the doubts, misgivings, and ambiguities reflected in the postmodern American novel have been influenced by the metaphors and models of quantum theory. Coale explains the basic facets of quantum theory in lay terms and then applies them to a selection of texts, including Don DeLillo's Underworld, Joan Didion's Democracy, and Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. Using a new approach to literature and culture, this book aims to bridge the gap between science and the humanities by suggesting the many areas where they connect.
BOTH A REFLECTION AND A PRODUCT OF THE MIND This book does not offer a quantum mechanical 'explanation' of human consciousness. Rather, it proposes something far more radical: namely, that quantum mechanics, like any other model of human representation, is both a reflection and a product of the mind, and is fundamentally intuitive, describing a reality of which we are an integral component. ROBERT G. JAHN is Professor of Aerospace Sciences and Dean, Emeritus of Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, founder of the PEA R laboratory, and Chairman of ICRL. BRENDA J. DUNNE holds degrees in psychology and the humanities, was the director of the PEA R laboratory from its inception in 1979, and is currently President of ICRL.
Lighthearted, quirky, and upbeat, this book explores the portrayal of science and technology on both the big and little screen -- and how Hollywood is actually doing a better job of getting it right than ever before. Grounded in the real-word, and often cutting-edge, science and technology that inspires fictional science, the authors survey Hollywood depictions of topics such as quantum mechanics, parallel universes, and alien worlds. Including material from interviews with over two dozen writers, producers, and directors of acclaimed science-themed productions -- as well as scientists, science fiction authors, and science advisors -- Hollyweird Science examines screen science fiction from the sometimes-conflicting vantage points of storytellers, researchers, and viewers. Including a foreword by Eureka co-creator and executive producer Jaime Paglia, and an afterword by astronomer and science fiction author Michael Brotherton, Ph.D., this book is accessible to all readers from the layperson to the armchair expert to the professional scientist, and will delight all of them equally.
A daring new vision of the quantum universe, and the scandals controversies, and questions that may illuminate our future--from Canada's leading mind on contemporary physics. Quantum physics is the golden child of modern science. It is the basis of our understanding of atoms, radiation, and so much else, from elementary particles and basic forces to the behaviour of materials. But for a century it has also been the problem child of science, plagued by intense disagreements between its intellectual giants, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, over the strange paradoxes and implications that seem like the stuff of fantasy. Whether it's Schrödinger's cat--a creature that is simultaneously dead and alive--or a belief that the world does not exist independently of our observations of it, quantum theory is what challenges our fundamental assumptions about our reality. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, globally renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin provocatively argues that the problems which have bedeviled quantum physics since its inception are unsolved for the simple reason that the theory is incomplete. There is more, waiting to be discovered. Our task--if we are to have simple answers to our simple questions about the universe we live in--must be to go beyond it to a description of the world on an atomic scale that makes sense. In this vibrant and accessible book, Smolin takes us on a journey through the basics of quantum physics, introducing the stories of the experiments and figures that have transformed the field, before wrestling with the puzzles and conundrums that they present. Along the way, he illuminates the existing theories about the quantum world that might solve these problems, guiding us toward his own vision that embraces common sense realism. If we are to have any hope of completing the revolution that Einstein began nearly a century ago, we must go beyond quantum mechanics as we know it to find a theory that will give us a complete description of nature. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Lee Smolin brings us a step closer to resolving one of the greatest scientific controversies of our age.
WHY GOD COULD NOT CREATE THE UNIVERSE WITH A DIFFERENT DIMENSION EVEN IF IT WANTED TO or perhaps anything else. Perhaps the universe must be the way it is. It seems that what is omnipotent is mathematics, elementary arithmetic, just counting. Yet even mathematics is not powerful enough to create a universe¿there are just too many conditions, conflicting. Existence is impossible. Beyond that for there to be structure is quite inconceivable. But the universe does exist, there are galaxies, stars, even the possibility of life. That life is possible merely allows it to exist but only with the greatest good fortune does it actually occur. Intelligence is vastly less likely, ability and technology far more improbable. That we are, what we are, seem so strange, inconceivable, that we are left merely with wonder¿and, as we seem unable to realize, the need for the deepest care, responsibility and gratitude. We have been given by the unbelievable benevolence of chance, no life, but life with the most wondrous part of the universe, the ability to think, to know, to create, to wonder¿and thus the demand that we use our most awesome gifts to protect them, to protect and preserve the world in which they exist, and the life, likely so rare if not unique in the universe, which has received these astounding favors of chance, that has been given by nature its most exalted constituents. What we are requires that we enhance what we are, what we are part of, to see, understand and be grateful. An exploration of the precise conditions required for the existence of humans in the universe. ...the author does an admirable job delineating the laws of physics without becoming too bogged down in complicated jargon, and he maintains a sense of wonder about the unique and random nature of the universe. He repeatedly celebrates our highly improbable achievements as a species, marveling at our ability to use the language of abstract mathematics to unravel the mysteries of existence. ... the prevailing tone of the narrative is clear and confident, marked by a meticulous attention to detail. An...often fascinating journey through the history of the universe and mankind. -Kirkus Discoveries
In this book, Henry Bar, physicist and the first quantum superhero, guides the reader through the amazing quantum world. His hair-raising adventures in his perilous struggle for quantum coherence are graphically depicted by comics and thoroughly explained to the lay reader. Behind each adventure lies a key concept in quantum physics. These concepts range from the basic quantum coherence and entanglement through tunnelling and the recently discovered quantum decoherence control, to the principles of the emerging technologies of quantum communication and computing. The explanations of the concepts are accessible, but nonetheless rigorous and detailed. They are followed by an account of the broader context of these concepts, their historic perspective, current status and forthcoming developments. Finally, thought-provoking philosophical and cultural implications of these concepts are discussed. The mathematical appendices of all chapters cover in a straightforward manner the core aspects of quantum physics at the level of a university introductory course. The Quantum Matrix presents an entertaining, popular, yet comprehensive picture of quantum physics . It can be read as a light-hearted illustrated tale, a philosophical treatise, or a textbook. Either way, the book lets the reader delve deeply into the wondrous quantum world from diverse perspectives and obtain glimpses into the quantum technologies that are about to reshape our lives. This book offers the reader an enjoyable and rewarding voyage through the quantum world.
Literature has never looked weirder--full of images, colors, gadgets, and footnotes, and violating established norms of character, plot, and narrative structure. Yet over the last 30 years, critics have coined more than 20 new “realisms” in their attempts to describe it. What makes this decidedly unorthodox literature “realistic”? And if it is, then what does “realism” mean anymore? Examining literature by dozens of writers, and over a century of theory and criticism about realism, The Moral Worlds of Contemporary Realism sorts through the current critical confusion to illustrate how our ideas about what is real and how best to depict it have changed dramatically, especially in recent years. Along the way, Mary K. Holland guides the reader on a lively tour through the landscape of contemporary literary studies--taking in metafiction, ideology, posthumanism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism--with forays into quantum mechanics, new materialism, and Buddhism as well, to give us entirely new ways of viewing how humans use language to make sense of--and to make--the world.
'This is about gob-smacking science at the far end of reason ... Take it nice and easy and savour the experience of your mind being blown without recourse to hallucinogens' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian For most people, quantum theory is a byword for mysterious, impenetrable science. And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this magisterial book, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly-written history of this fundamental scientific revolution, and the divisive debate at its core. Quantum theory looks at the very building blocks of our world, the particles and processes without which it could not exist. Yet for 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century. Quantum theory is weird. In 1905, Albert Einstein suggested that light was a particle, not a wave, defying a century of experiments. Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrodinger's famous dead-and-alive cat are similarly strange. As Niels Bohr said, if you weren't shocked by quantum theory, you didn't really understand it. While "Quantum" sets the science in the context of the great upheavals of the modern age, Kumar's centrepiece is the conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science. 'Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved', lamented the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. But in "Quantum", Kumar brings Einstein back to the centre of the quantum debate. "Quantum" is the essential read for anyone fascinated by this complex and thrilling story and by the band of brilliant men at its heart.
"The science-fiction genre known as steampunk juxtaposes futuristic technologies with Victorian settings. This fantasy is becoming reality at the intersection of two scientific fields-twenty-first-century quantum physics and nineteenth-century thermodynamics, or the study of energy-in a discipline known as quantum steampunk"--
