The full title of the book is — The Dream Universe: How Fundamental Physics Lots its Way. This one came out in March of 2020. The author had previously written the book The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory back in 1994, but I had not read that one — yet. I suppose it would make sense to first read The End of Physics before digging into The Dream Universe, but it was ok to dig into the book without reading The End of Physics first.

The author covers the history of basic scientific thought going back to Plato and Aristotle, but most of the real start of contemporary science and physics started with Galileo and Newton.

Mr. Lindley wrote that Galileo “had no patience with mystical blather about the divine elegance of mathematics, the sort of nonsense that Kepler embraced in his solar system of nested Platonic solids. Galileo spent his life putting mathematics to work in the service of facts and tried hard to extinguish the ancient philosophical idea that the power and rigor of math was the sole source of worthwhile truth.” (page 122) While I am not 100% sure of that, he does present evidence that Galileo diverted from Platonic thought when it came to how math could be used in scientific experiments.

On page 184, Lindley asks some big questions — “Are fundamental physicists still practicing science in an evolved but recognizable form, or have they slipped into another mode of thinking entirely? What are they trying to do, and can they ever do it?”

In the conclusion of the book, Lindley says that the philosophical underpinnings of physics has become too focused on mathematics. While string theory might be elegant and beautiful, it doesn’t necessarily need to be correct. As Lee Smolin had said, string theory attracts the wrong kind of people. (page 159) They are too engrossed in the mathematics of the theory.

The book gave me lots of references to lots of other books that I’ve heard of, but I (mostly) have not had the time to read. So, I should go ahead and read these other books mentioned or cited.

• The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene in 1999
• The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene in 2011
• The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin in 2007
• Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin in 2001
• Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos by Seth Lloyd in 2007
• A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann in 1976
• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife in 2000
• e: The Story of a Number by Eli Maor in 2015
• An Imaginary Tale: The Story of √-1 by Paul J. Nahin in 2016
• Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality by Max Tegmark in 2015
• Why Beauty Is Truth: The History of Symmetry by Ian Stewart in 2007
• It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science by Graham Farmelo in 2002
• Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio in 2010
• Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku in 2006
• Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe by Martin Rees in 2000
• Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray by Sabine Hossenfelder in 2020
• Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit in 2007