The full title is Existential physics: a scientists guide to life’s biggest questions. This one came out in 2022.
I read this one right after reading Sabine’s previous book entitled Lost in Math. This was a good followup. As an amateur astronomer and a physics major from college a LONG time ago, I often have my head in the clouds and I ask myself some of the same deep questions that are posed in her new book. Some of those questions are:
“Does the past still exist? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything?” and — Does the universe think? Are humans predictable? What’s the purpose of anything anyway?
I did not mark as many pages to comment on as I did with the Lost in Math book, but I found this one just as enjoyable.
Starting on page 95, she interviewed David Deutsch. It was noted that he wrote some books, The Fabric of Reality and the Beginning of Infinity. They sound interesting.
Chapter 6 (page 125-) – Has physics ruled out free will? This depends on what you mean by free will. In short, she thinks that the answer to that is no. She wrote:
“The major problem with discussions about free will is that philosophers have put forward a heap of definitions that have nothing to do with what nonphilosophers think free will means. I am tempted to write “normal people” as opposed to ‘philosophers,’ but maybe that’s a little uncharitable. And I don’t want to be uncharitable. Certainly not.” More of this chapter was transcribed at this blog post.
I liked this line on page 134 — “If you tell someone you think free will is real because the renormalization group equations might run into an essential singularity, you might as well paint GEEK on your forehead.”
Brief answer on this question (page 141) — “According to the currently established laws of nature, the future is determined by the past, except for occasional quantum events that we cannot influence. Whether you take that to mean that free will does not exist depends on your definition of free will.” Not sure I agree with her on this.
Page 191 – Zeeya Merali wrote a book — Big Bang in a little room: the Quest to Create New Universes.
On page 217, she starts an epilogue. She noted that physicists who propose unobservable parallel universe, they are not using science. “It’s religion masquerading as science under the guise of mathematics.”
However, on page 219, she says she agrees with Stephen Jay Gould on how religion and science are two “nonoverlapping magisteria.” I do not agree with her on that point. I think that religions overlap (or try to overlap) into science all the time. It was a mystery how thunder and lightning worked, and it was a mystery how alcohol was made as literal spirits. Over time, science has shown how weather works, and how alcohol can be made. Science continues to explain things that religions do not, but religions never explain things (yet) that science could not. But I do agree that there are some questions that are asked by both religious and scientific people all the same, and we do not have good answers yet, or some questions may not be answerable — ever. Both groups want to make sense of the world, and to make sense of how people and groups of people behave.
She concludes with “So, yes, we are bags of atoms crawling around on a pale blue dot in the outer spiral arm of a remarkably unremarkable galaxy. And yet we are so much more than this.”
Sorry, but I prefer to think of myself as a meat robot with a skeleton and a brain, but anyway, yes, we are more than just those things.