A Comparison of Three Books Written by Physicists About Physics
Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. Carlo Rovelli. Riverhead Books. NY. 2021.
Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality. Frank Wilczek. Penguin Press. NY. 2021.
Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and The Emergence of Spacetime. Sean Carroll. Dutton. NY. 2019.
Overture
David Deutsch, in his book The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, uses physics as a platform to tell the larger story of the human condition. I became curious about how other physicists were telling the story of quantum physics itself.
I’ve since come across three other books written by quantum physicists specifically about physics, who’s audience is us lay readers. This is tough stuff, famously summarized by one of the stellar quantum physicists of the 1900’s, Richard Feynman, who said, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” All three books offer this quote. And then all three launch into explaining it to us.
I will not explain quantum mechanics to you in this series of articles. Instead, I will explore the three authors’ stories of physics: their respective versions on how it began, who the main characters are, and what they conclude.
The authors overlap in their stories, but also have telling differences. The fun is in exploring those similarities and in understanding their very different conclusions.
I want to explore these stories for several reasons. First, physics is an integral part of our current daily life. Second, how we tell the story of the hard science of physics could have profound repercussions going into our collective future. And finally, the authors—quantum physicists themselves—are valiantly attempting to tell us the story of physics so that we lay people can understand it.
First, I accept each author’s claims: that Quantum Physics is—along with the theory of evolution—the overarching accomplishment of modern humans and of considerable importance to how we conceptualize where we are headed next as a species. It is a fact that quantum physics is ever-present in our lives, everyday, in many ways.
As each author claims to one extent or another, physics allows us to have the computers we are all using—me to write and post this article and you to read it—along with the satellites that enable the communication, the GPS that finds our respective computers, and so much more.
We all practice general science already, in large amounts of our activities at home and on the job. We are also affected by science in political policy, in consumer goods, in medicine and health care, and in our arts. But science is continually challenging our faith and our intuition.
How can it be learned, applied, questioned reasonably, improved upon, and even believed? These authors are making an attempt to bring us laypeople into the awareness of science’s place in our daily lives, specifically quantum physics.
Second, how we tell stories is important to how we see our reality. Each author is explaining quantum physics as they see it; they also tell us the history of physics and who were the main players (both people and ideas). How would their respective stories impact policy makers regarding those satellites, consumer goods, medicine, and so on?
As Mary Beard has so eloquently shown in SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the stories we tell ourselves directly impact what we believe, how we behave, and how the stories—whether true or false—influence our future’s history.
Beard shows that the legendary story of Rome’s founding was interpreted by different Roman writers throughout Rome’s 1000-year history for different purposes of persuasion. Each writer’s story about Rome’s beginning becomes an important part of later Rome’s self-concept, with each self-concept building upon the previous ones and morphing over the decades and centuries depending on the current political and social needs.
Compared to Rome’s 1000-year history, quantum physics’ story is quite brief, only just now 100+ years old. Even so, the story of quantum physics has changed in this brief timescale, and still changes depending on who is telling the story.
What are the implications these physicists are trying to promote by their story-telling about quantum’s beginnings and its main characters?
How are they trying to persuade us?
And finally, I explore these stories about physics because these folks are trying to tell us something quite profound. The profundity depends on their particular story, but these writers are accomplished scientists in their respective sub-disciplines of physics. They spend hours and days and years studying these topics. They have spent time with their colleagues in developing those experiments, in writing up the results of those experiments, in discussing the experiments in conferences across the globe. They think in a rarified air that I can only imagine: of equations and numbers and paradoxes that confound and impress.
And they are clearly struggling to make sense of it all in a way that can make sense to you and me as well.
They WANT you and me to understand what they are understanding, to see what they are seeing, to comprehend that what they are learning has remarkable consequences for humanity now and into the future.
And why does this matter: what a physicist thinks? What I see are honest, earnest attempts to understand complete human knowledge. There are very few books written by a humanities professor about the big history of the universe or an explanatory thesis of human knowledge. Few, it seems, dare to explain physics, chemistry, and math along with history, the arts, psychology, and sociology.
But many physicists do dare to include in their writings an explanation of human culture, creativity, and exceptionalism. David Deutsch is one example. Thus, physicists’ bird’s eye views are illuminating.
But I also wonder if a lot of these physicists are looking for feedback, critique, or input. Could it be that they are so immersed in a confounding way of interpreting reality that they are throwing out nets to see what comes back? “Are we missing something? Are we really seeing reality? Experiments that meet predictions but can’t be explained? What’s going on?”
Or perhaps it’s also a way of planting seeds of awareness for the rest of us: “Beware, ‘cause you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
So I write these articles comparing these stories to help me understand, and maybe along my journey you too will appreciate what is taking place in the world of quantum mechanics. Maybe together we can engage these scientists in a conversation about our human endeavor to comprehend the human condition: what makes us humans so different out of all the species on this planet that we alone ponder our place in the universe with scientific experiments, creative culture, and belief systems?
The Three Books
The books we’ll be looking at together are:
Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. Carlo Rovelli. Riverhead Books. NY. 2021. Rovelli is a theoretical physicist, Italian, working in Marseille, France. Found and purchased at Literati Bookstore.
Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality. Frank Wilczek. Penguin Press. NY. 2021. Wilczek is a theoretical physicist, American, working in Massachusetts, USA. Found at Eureka Springs Carnegie Library; purchased at Alibris.com.
Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and The Emergence of Spacetime. Sean Carroll. Dutton. NY. 2019. Carroll is a research physicist, American, working in California, USA. Found at Eureka Springs Carnegie Library; purchased at Alibris.com.
Genesis
Helgoland: the sacred island. Rovelli’s book is named after the island that Heisenberg sequestered himself to in order to better think about the big conundrum of physics at that time. Rovelli begins his book with an introduction titled “Into the Abyss.”
Rovelli’s abyss is a metaphor of warning and inspiration.
Thus begins one of the three books we’ll be reviewing: physics is an abyss of uncertainty and probability rather than familiar predictability. Yet physics is also discovery and significance. Rovelli gives away his conclusion right from the beginning: he is partisan to the “relational interpretation of quantum theory.”
Fundamentals: the basics. Wilczek mentions how his book is “meant to offer an alternative to traditional religious fundamentalism.” He begins his book with an introduction titled “Born Again.” In studying physics, “we are studying how God works, and thereby learning what God is. In that spirit, we can interpret the search for knowledge as a form of worship, and our discoveries as revelations.”
He learned two lessons in writing this book: the lesson of abundance and the necessity to be born again.
Thus the second of three books we’ll be looking at suggests a type of spiritual attitude towards physics. To understand physics, we’ll need to appreciate just how abundant the universe is; but mostly, it takes a certain outlook. We must become like babies: open to the world, curious, without preconceptions. Being born again can be disorienting but also exhilarating. Wilczek ends the book with the same sentiment: an appreciation of how science can be our new religion, particularly for moral guidance.
Something Deeply Hidden: what is the true nature of quantum physics? Carroll begins his book with an introduction titled “Don’t Be Afraid.” He sets himself up to be a rogue, radical physicist. He wants to know both the how and why of physics; to fearlessly explore the specific fundamentals of why physics works.
His answer, unapologetically—but respectfully—is the Many-Worlds theory, that new universes are being created every second.
Thus the third of our three books begins with a lament that most quantum physicists today are not concerned with the why of physics, but only with the how. Being concerned with the how has helped apply quantum mechanics to everything from chemistry to computer technology; but most physicists have not dared to probe deeper into the fundamentals of why physics works: the simplest explanation, says Carroll, is because Many-Worlds are created continuously.
Right away we see a similar story arising from all three physicists, even as they are quite different in their approaches and conclusions. Quantum physics is not intuitive, is not common sense, does rely upon a community of scientists to understand and experiment and interpret, and requires of all humans an ability to think differently.
We are on a quest, all three seem to suggest.
We have been given a task: to understand quantum physics. In this quest the future is uncertain and calls for us to face inner demons and outer obstacles along the way; people will offer red herrings to distract us from our appointed goal; and even if we reach the desired knowledge, it will most certainly not be what we expect. And yet, we will be better for the journey.
Next: The Characters and The Conflict
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