 Softcover edition | |
| Author | David Deutsch |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Modern physics, quantum mechanics |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Adult |
Publication date | August 1, 1997 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback), Kindle, Audiobook |
| Pages | 390 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-0713990614 |
| Followed by | The Beginning of Infinity |
The Fabric of Reality is a 1997 book by physicist David Deutsch. His follow-up book, The Beginning of Infinity , was published in 2011.
The book expands on his views of quantum mechanics and its implications for understanding reality. This interpretation, which he calls the multiverse hypothesis, is one of a four-strand theory of everything (TOE). [1]
His theory of everything is (weakly) emergentist rather than reductive. It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather at mutual support among multiverse, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles.
Critical reception has been generally positive. [1] [2] [3] [4] The New York Times wrote a mixed review for The Fabric of Reality, writing that it "is full of refreshingly oblique, provocative insights. But I came away from it with only the mushiest sense of how the strands in Deutsch's tapestry hang together." [5] The Guardian was more favorable in their review, stating "This is a deep and ambitious book and there were plenty of moments when I was out of my depth (the Platonic dialogue between Deutsch and a Crypto-inductivist left me with a pronounced sinking feeling). But the sheer adventure of thinking not just out of the envelope but right out of the Newtonian universe is exhilarating." [6]
The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, stemming from the work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and others. While "Copenhagen" refers to the Danish city, the use as an "interpretation" was apparently coined by Heisenberg during the 1950s to refer to ideas developed in the 1925–1927 period, glossing over his disagreements with Bohr. Consequently, there is no definitive historical statement of what the interpretation entails.
David Elieser Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer. He is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse. This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in different "worlds". The evolution of reality as a whole in MWI is rigidly deterministic and local. Many-worlds is also called the relative state formulation or the Everett interpretation, after physicist Hugh Everett, who first proposed it in 1957. Bryce DeWitt popularized the formulation and named it many-worlds in the 1970s.
The multiverse is the hypothetical set of all universes. Together, these universes are presumed to comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "flat universes", "other universes", "alternate universes", "multiple universes", "plane universes", "parent and child universes", "many universes", or "many worlds". One common assumption is that the multiverse is a "patchwork quilt of separate universes all bound by the same laws of physics."
A theory of everything (TOE), final theory, ultimate theory, unified field theory, or master theory is a singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all aspects of the universe. Finding a theory of everything is one of the major unsolved problems in physics.
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within the universe, as opposed to that which is only imaginary, nonexistent or nonactual. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown.
Quantum suicide is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics and the philosophy of physics. Purportedly, it can falsify any interpretation of quantum mechanics other than the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, from the cat's point of view. Quantum immortality refers to the subjective experience of surviving quantum suicide. This concept is sometimes conjectured to be applicable to real-world causes of death as well.
In philosophy, the philosophy of physics deals with conceptual and interpretational issues in physics, many of which overlap with research done by certain kinds of theoretical physicists. Historically, philosophers of physics have engaged with questions such as the nature of space, time, matter and the laws that govern their interactions, as well as the epistemological and ontological basis of the theories used by practicing physicists. The discipline draws upon insights from various areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science, while also engaging with the latest developments in theoretical and experimental physics.
Lee Smolin is an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo, and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto. Smolin's 2006 book The Trouble with Physics criticized string theory as a viable scientific theory. He has made contributions to quantum gravity theory, in particular the approach known as loop quantum gravity. He advocates that the two primary approaches to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity and string theory, can be reconciled as different aspects of the same underlying theory. He also advocates an alternative view on space and time that he calls temporal naturalism. His research interests also include cosmology, elementary particle theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and theoretical biology.
In the history of science, Laplace's demon was a notable published articulation of causal determinism on a scientific basis by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
In computer science and quantum physics, the Church–Turing–Deutsch principle is a stronger, physical form of the Church–Turing thesis formulated by David Deutsch in 1985. The principle states that a universal computing device can simulate every physical process.
Holism in science, holistic science, or methodological holism is an approach to research that emphasizes the study of complex systems. Systems are approached as coherent wholes whose component parts are best understood in context and in relation to both each other and to the whole. Holism typically stands in contrast with reductionism, which describes systems by dividing them into smaller components in order to understand them through their elemental properties.
Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos is a popular science book by Michio Kaku first published in 2004.
There is a diversity of views that propose interpretations of quantum mechanics. They vary in how many physicists accept or reject them. An interpretation of quantum mechanics is a conceptual scheme that proposes to relate the mathematical formalism to the physical phenomena of interest. The present article is about those interpretations which, independently of their intrinsic value, remain today less known, or are simply less debated by the scientific community, for different reasons.
Everything, every-thing, or every thing, is all that exists; it is an antithesis of nothing, or its complement. It is the totality of things relevant to some subject matter. Without expressed or implied limits, it may refer to anything. The universe is everything that exists theoretically, though a multiverse may exist according to theoretical cosmology predictions. It may refer to an anthropocentric worldview, or the sum of human experience, history, and the human condition in general. Every object and entity is a part of everything, including all physical bodies and in some cases all abstract objects.
An index list of articles about the philosophy of science.
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World is a popular science book by the physicist David Deutsch first published in 2011.
Simon Wolfe Saunders is a British philosopher of physics. He is noted for his work on quantum mechanics, on identity and indiscernibility in physics, and on structural realism.
Epistemological Letters was a hand-typed, mimeographed "underground" newsletter about quantum physics that was distributed to a private mailing list, described by the physicist and Nobel laureate John Clauser as a "quantum subculture", between 1973 and 1984.
Constructor theory is a proposal for a new mode of explanation in fundamental physics in the language of ergodic theory, developed by physicists David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto, at the University of Oxford, since 2012. Constructor theory expresses physical laws exclusively in terms of which physical transformations, or tasks, are possible versus which are impossible, and why. By allowing such counterfactual statements into fundamental physics, it allows new physical laws to be expressed, such as the constructor theory of information.