God Does Play Dice with the Universe

God Does Play Dice with the Universe – Shan Gao **

In God Does Play Dice with the Universe, Chinese author Shan Gao describes his interesting thesis that motion can be explained if quantum particles move in a discrete (as opposed to continuous) and random fashion.

There are without doubt some interesting points here, but as a book, God Does Play Dice has some big problems. Effectively self-published, it is a very short book – just over 100 pages, which are bizarrely double spaced like a manuscript, taking it down to 50 real pages. English is not the author’s first language, and though the text is largely comprehensible, the author clearly isn’t up to the challenge of explaining the complexities of a quantum level theory to the general reader. This is difficult for an accomplished science writer, and however good Shan Gao’s theories, he is not one (at least in English).

I was also puzzled that though he quotes Richard Feynman several times, there is no mention of quantum electrodynamics, despite there being significant parallels between its approach of summation over all paths and this book’s ‘random and discontinuous’ mantra. This phrase, along with ‘God does not play dice’ is repeated so many times that if the repetitions were extracted, you would end up with little more than a magazine article.

We see quite a few self-published books for review that describe ‘my theory of the universe’ or words to that effect. Such self-deluded rambling is not what we’ve got here. There is quite possibly something worth examining in Shan Gao’s theories – but it would require a better writer to make them accessible to the general reader.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically? Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...

Search This Blog