Truth and Absurdity in Modern Physics
The Five Most Important Unsolved Problems in Physics, and Their Solutions: 2nd Edition
The thorough scientific manifesto Truth and Absurdity in Modern Physics is a refreshing introduction to the opaque features of modern physics and inscrutable controversies in the field.
Daniel W. Youngner’s scientific survey Truth and Absurdity in Modern Physics is a provocative overview of promising developments in physics that counterbalances popular misunderstandings about the nature of physical reality.
A major throughline is the book’s consistent call for more realistic guardrails in contemporary scientific thinking. Too often, the book claims, physicists are enthralled by hypotheses that are possible in a technical and mathematical sense but have tenuous connections to reality. Much of the research community’s latest thinking about far-out concepts like multiverses, quantum tunneling, and quantum superposition (made famous through the notorious “Schrödinger’s Cat” thought experiment) is undermined, it says, by conceptual errors and a failure to appreciate the scale of probabilities involved.
To correct this, the book proposes the implementation of the “triple-googol rule,” a simple equation that limits the number of possibilities that theoretical physicists should be allowed to consider, ruling out those theoretical options that have a preposterous likelihood of being true. With these sensible parameters in place, the book addresses major contemporary issues in general relativity and quantum mechanics, dispelling misunderstandings in a snarky, if entertaining, tone. After advocating a far more cautious outlook on the quest for a so-called “Theory of Everything” and deflating much of the hype surrounding “quick fix” technologies like quantum computing, the book ends with a challenging, unorthodox proposal about the role of consciousness in human understandings of the quantum level of reality.
Though ambitious in scope, the book proves accessible, flagging its most mathematics-saturated sections ahead of time and suggesting an alternative reading order for those put off by the density of its equations. It is rich in charts, graphs, and tables that illustrate the minutiae of contemporary advancements in science. Still, it overindulges in the finer points of its profusion of subarguments, if tempering such density with lean humor and clear examples.
With remarkable thoroughness, the book challenges lazy consensuses even among the higher registers of the scientific community, making its pages bold and invigorating but also often confrontational. The closing three chapters are dedicated to consciousness; they are more speculative and conjectural than the preceding work, and their most eccentric claims are not given the same level of attention as the book’s earlier takedowns of others’ weak arguments.
Targeted at specialists and laypeople alike, Truth and Absurdity in Modern Physics is a stimulating survey of issues in popular science.
Reviewed by
Isaac Randel
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