BOOKS & ARTS A touch too much THE HUMAN TOUCH: OUR PART IN THE CREATION OF On our A UNIVERSE BY MICHAEL FRAYN bookshelf Faber and Faber: 2006. 505 pp. £20

Michael Frayn is an accomplished novelist and asks, if these laws did not exist? And what playwright, best known by physicists for his caused the Titantic to sink? Frayn advances a superb play Copenhagen. Based on the meeting raft of plausible causes, few of them that will be Moonshine Beyond the between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in obvious to readers (like myself) unable to see Monster by Terry Gannon occupied Denmark during the Second World beyond the iceberg. Cambridge Univ. Press: War, Copenhagen achieved signifi cant success as But such passages are the exception rather 2006. 492 pp. £75 a play, and a warm reception from the physics than the rule and, overall, it is hard to avoid Th e fi rst book on the community. It also led to Bohr’s estate releasing the conclusion that the pedantic nature of theory of Moonshine, various letters that he had written, but never real philosophy has little to off er real physics. explaining the sent, much sooner than intended. “Philosophy has never culminated in any connection between Given this background, there is every reason generally accepted body of doctrine, or even the monster fi nite to look forward to a heft y non-fi ction book seemed to be on the road towards it, as science group, modular from Frayn with the subtitle Our Part in the is thought to be by many scientists,” as Frayn functions and vertex Creation of a Universe. But note that word “our”: concedes in his opening prospectus. But it is operator algebras, as Th e Human Touch is very much concerned with his take on the Universe at large that is most well as those between our conceptions of the Universe and reality. In surprising: “Th e world has no form or substance mathematics and other words, this is a book about philosophy. without you and me to provide them and you theoretical physics. Frayn argues, in a nutshell, that the Universe and I have no form or substance without the only makes sense because we are here. I am world to provide them in its turn.” not the only reader to fi nd this surprising. In His views remind me of the joke about an the acknowledgements Frayn confesses that engineer, a physicist and a mathematician who New in his old philosophy tutor and long-time friend, are on a train in Scotland. Th e engineer looks Jonathan Bennett, described the book as out of the window, sees a black sheep and says: paperback “anthropocentrism run amok”. “All Scottish sheep are black.” Th e physicist It is true that the ideas of reality and disagrees: “No, some Scottish sheep are black.” observation are inextricably linked in quantum Th e mathematician is not impressed: “Th ere is at theory in a way that encourages many physicists least one fi eld, containing at least one sheep, of to be philosophical. Frayn has clearly read which at least one side is black.” If Frayn’s book widely, and not just the obvious popular books, is any guide, a philosopher on the train would but, unlike Copenhagen, physics is not centre correct the mathematician: “Th ere is at least one stage here (although it is discussed at length in fi eld, containing at least one sheep, of which at the copious notes). One begins to wonder where least one side was black at the instant you looked he is heading, however, when he starts to cast at it, although there is no way of knowing that it doubts on the existence of the Universe before is still black — whatever black means. And what Cryostat Design, humans arrived to observe it. Part of the appeal is a sheep anyway?” Material Properties, of cosmology is that the sheer vastness of the Lest the reader think that such a joke and Superconductor Universe means that we can view parts of it as trivializes Frayn’s arguments, I should point Critical-Current Testing they were at various diff erent eras of its history, out that Th e Human Touch is full of personal by Jack W. Ekin including times long before our arrival. anecdotes and everyday examples, including Th ere are interesting passages on diff erent countless references to cars, snooker and the Oxford Univ. Press: types of laws, for instance, that the open- best approach to use when asking a girl out on a 2006. 704 pp. £65 minded physicist will enjoy. Are the laws of date. Now there’s a subject on which physicists A practical ‘how to’ nature constitutive (do they somehow create could benefi t from outside advice. book that contains the world) or are they regulatory (do they the details the author control its behaviour)? Would the world exist, Peter Rodgers wishes he’d been told would angular momentum be conserved, would Peter Rodgers is the chief editor of Nature when he began his entropy always increase, Frayn mischievously Nanotechnology low-temperature career. nature physics | VOL 3 | JANUARY 2007 | www.nature.com/naturephysics 9