Other Worlds (Penguin Science)

Rating:
Summary: Other Worlds: Many strong points, a few weak ones.
Review: Davies is a well-known professor of mathematical physics now retired to writing books explaining and popularizing quantum physics. This is one of his earlier books (1980) and, as other reviewers may have noted, he has since honed his writing skills. Yet, this is an interesting book, particularly, I think, in his treatment of stellar nucleosynthesis, nuclear mechanics, the significance of the strong and weak nuclear forces being what they are, the significance of the hydrogen to helium ratio in the early universe (this having to do with the formulation and ratio of protons to neutrons at a highly specific moment) and other factors relating to the so-called anthropic cosmological principle. Another interesting discussion is of the synthesis and unique properties of carbon. Readers may also find Davies' description and contrasting of the Bohr/Copenhagen interpretation with the Everett/'many worlds' interpretation (of quantum superpositioning) to be valuable.
The book's weaknesses I will relegate mainly to its beginning and endings. The last chapter, "Supertime", an excursion into the Everett view, is, unfortunately, Davies at his least interesting. And it might be noted, though Davies does not, that most physicists continue to prefer the Bohr view to Everett's (and that both may be wrong, for that matter). The last few pages seemed almost tedious to this reader. The other problem that I saw was Davies early tendency to equate "theology" with vitalism. In this naïve view, popularized by Carl Sagan, one is asked to accept that modern western science emerged triumphantly from polytheistic ('the gods must be angry') cultures, which is simply wrong. Scientific thinking was birthed as Hellenism moved away from polytheism toward an overarching monotheism (Anaxagoras' primordial Mind, Aristotle's First Mover, etc). The thinking was that if nature had been rationally and willfully produced, it must then be reducible to coherent 'laws' which could be rationally understood. As intellectualized pagan monotheism gave way to Judeo-Christian monotheism in the following centuries, this thinking was reinforced. The early practitioners, philosophers and patrons of science were not vitalists or shamanists or animists, they were not polytheists or pantheists or atheists or even agnostics. Only within the monotheistic view was nature expected to 'make sense' and only within this view was natural science a rational undertaking. Davies almost got it right without noticing it: "This belief in simplicity at the heart of complexity has been a driving force behind scientific inquiry for millennia, and persists undiminished today, in spite of the shocks that, as we shall see, it has received in recent times." (p 19) First Philosophy (natural theology) and natural science (natural philosophy) were something of a twin birth in Greek thought. The former being the underwriter and guarantor of the latter. That there must be an inherent conflict is a rather recent propaganda (played up by both poles, to be sure). In fairness to Davies, I'll point out that by the time he had written 'The Mind of God' (1993) he had begun to approach a better understanding. In the more recent book he writes, "the justification for what we today call the scientific approach to inquiry was the belief in a rational God whose created order could be discerned from a careful study of nature."
Davies knowledge of current and historical philosophical aspects of science runs deeper than many people writing on these issues today. Take away the first and last few pages and this is a pretty good book. Even when he's sub-par, Davies is quite good. If I were to suggest inaugural inductees to a science writer's hall of fame, my short list would be: George Gamow, Roger Penrose, and Paul Davies.

Rating:
Summary: Great Read, but not one of Davies' Best...
Review: I really enjoy reading Paul Davies' books. Davies is a nice departure from many science writers who cannot come to a non-physicist level when explaining a concept. In down-to-earth terms, he explains anti-matter and how Einstein's theories explain much about time and space.

The reason I don't give this book 5 stars is that it is one of Davies' earlier writings (originally published in 1980). I think he's improved over the years, and one of the best reads I've had from Davies is his "The Last Three Minutes." "Other Worlds" is a great read, but it never seems to achieve it's objective. At the onset, you're expecting to learn how alternate existences and parallel universes may exist or at least be explained mathematically, and if they do exist, what is their physical representation. To me, however, the whole point of the book is lost in deep explanations regarding electron paths and variances along those paths, etc. How these variances apply to "Other Worlds" is never clearly explained. At least to me.

Still, it's a Davies book, and they're very interesting to read. He puts scientific principles in layman's terms without insulting one's intelligence. Overall, I recommend this book, even though I'd recommend reading some of his later works first.

Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: It reads like your video manual...
Review: The first thing that needs to be examined about a book such as this is to whom is it addressed to. If it's aimed towards people with a very basic knowledge in physics and it attempts to explain the quantum world to them, it has more than probably failed. A target group other than that would be a moot target assuming they'd already have a fundamental knowledge of quantum physics.

This book reads like your proverbial video manual. You suspect that its author might (and that's a major "might") know what he's talking about but you certainly won't. In the end your video recorder won't work and you'll be bored breathless.

Even though Paul Davies wants to delve into (and explain) such exciting matters such as the possibility of parallel universes and other dimensions a great many things go wrong in the process:

-first of all he's totally unreadable, unleashing pages upon pages of dull writting at you. Where illustrations, graphs and diagrams should be present to help the reader understand what it is he's saying, they are no where to be seen.

-secondly, his whole thesis is flawed because it's riddled with dogma scattered all over the book. Things become even worse because many times the scientific dogma thrown at us contradicts the author himself. Other times it seems apparent that the author is spectacularly unaware of certain facts that would make some of the theories he presents weak. Example: on pages 142-145, Davies argues that the conditions on earth are amazingly ideal for life to flourish. Earlier by the way, he's argued that life is rare in the universe exactly because you need ideal conditions. Anyhow, he goes on explaining that we live on a "relatively quiet place in the universe" without cataclysms or massive upheavals that would threaten life on earth. Sadly though, it's well known that there must have been at least 4 such massive upheavals in the earth's history which came very near to destroying all life and the conditions for it necessary (due to comet or asteroid impacts or other reasons we haven't figured out yet) and yet life survived. This actually shows that life is way more durable than the author assumes. Then anybody who's read a only little bit about asteroids and comets knows that it's only a myth that we live in a quiet corner and that we might be subject to surreal destruction any given minute. Then he goes on claiming that life cannot exist beyond temperatures of boiling water. Maybe someone should've pointed out to the author that bacteria have been found to happily live in the earth's lava of all places!!!!!

Such comical passages are not isolated in the book. In fact, most of the "Other worlds" is jam-packed with dogmatic assumptions like that. I could list several examples such as the above but then i'd need to write a small book myself.

What i found even more annoying in this book, is that while the author actually wants to present us with an unconventional view of the world and reality as we should perceive it, what he manages instead is to provide yet another bible for the clueless.

If you're going to entertain notions such as parallel universes, or if you're going to actually admit that on the subatomic level things do not make sense the way physics has been (???) making sense of our world so far, then you have to, no, no you are absolutely obliged to, leave any possibility open. In a parallel universe there's no guarantee that anything "works" the way it does here. I'm going too far, because in fact even in in THIS universe there's no guarantee that everywhere things work as they do here. But, when you reach passages where the author talks about calculating the total mass of black holes in the universe you lose all hope of unconventionality and you'reassured you're in the realm of a new religion dawning. We already have more than enough religions though, and certainly more dogmas than we can handle.

The quest for a book that deals with quantum physics in a comprehensive, and more importantly, undogmatic way, unfortunately continues...

Rating:
Summary: Quantum mechanics and the multiverse.
Review: This book is an excellent introduction to quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle and their consequences for spacetime and the universe: the coexistence of countless parallel worlds.

As always, Paul Davies' explanations are clear, easily understandable and intriguing.
He gives us an answer for all kind of questions.
Why are common sense and determinism illusions? What is superspace? What is an infinite-dimensional superworld?
Until he arrives at the ultimate one: why do we find ourselves living in this particular universe rather than one of the myriad others? Here he remains silent ... for the moment.

A super intriguing book. Not to be missed.