In Thrall to Uncertainty a History of How Quantum Theory Has Permeated Western Culture Refreshes Jim Baggott
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PHYSICS In thrall to uncertainty A history of how quantum theory has permeated Western culture refreshes Jim Baggott. uantum theory is the most accu The Quantum Moment: punch — “wild and mysterious, packed rate and precise description of the How Planck, Bohr, with creative force” — and why it seems to Qmolecular, atomic, sub-atomic and Einstein, and Heisenberg be rediscovered in every generation. The sub-nuclear realms ever devised. It is also Taught Us to Love authors’ tale is structured along approxi utterly exasperating. To anyone tutored Uncertainty mately linear historical lines, from Max ROBERT P. CREASE in the language and the logic of classical AND ALFRED SCHARFF Planck’s discovery in 1900 that light can be physics, it is mathematically challenging, GOLDHABER described in terms of discrete ‘bundles’ of maddeningly bizarre and breathtakingly W. W. Norton: 2014. energy (quanta) to Bell’s theorem, which beautiful. As charismatic US physicist Rich opened the door from the 1960s onwards ard Feynman warned: “Nobody understands to some extraordinary experimental tests of quantum mechanics.” O2 arena. And UK-based dramatist Tom the nature of our physical reality. Each chap Given its recondite nature, quantum Stoppard’s 1988 play Hapgood blends the ter explores how some of the core ideas and weirdness has entered popular culture in duality of the double agent with a quantum principles that sprang from these historical remarkable ways. What might otherwise duality in which matter and light are both moments have been absorbed into (inevita have been the preserve of dry academic waves and particles. Both of these works are bly mostly US) popular culture. This makes texts and stuffy scientific conferences has cited in The Quantum Moment, in which for an entertaining read, even for those become common currency. Who hasn’t philosopher Robert Crease and physicist already familiar with the story. heard of Heisenberg’s uncertainty princi Alfred Goldhaber explore quantum theory’s As Crease and Goldhaber explain, much ple or Schrödinger’s cat? Quantum ideas of enduring cultural impact. of the impact on modern culture derives space, time and matter inspired British art Based on a class that the authors have from what quantum theory has to say about ist Anthony Gormley’s vast, enigmatic steel taught for six years at Stony Brook Univer the nature of reality. Arguably, centuries of sculpture Quantum Cloud near London’s sity, New York, the book asks why quan observation, experimentation and strenu tum theory carries such a metaphorical ous intellectual endeavour were founded NEW IN The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew PAPERBACK Alan Lightman (Vintage, 2014) Physicist and literary wizard Alan Lightman reflects on how our cosmos, potentially Highlights of this one among uncountable others, has fortuitously created the perfect conditions for life. season’s releases He considers intricate symmetries in nature and the unfathomable vastness of space. This journey through seven overlapping ‘universes’ — frameworks for exploring recent research — culminates in a vision of humanity hooked on technology, gradually detaching itself from reality. 308 | NATURE | VOL 513 | 18 SEPTEMBER 2014 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved AUTUMN BOOKS COMMENT on scientists’ expectation that the material elsewhere called “experimental philosophy”. (who should probably know better) have world is composed of some kind of funda It is this work that has prompted the current been more than willing to indulge their mental atoms of ‘stuff’. Quantum theory, interest in quantum cryptography, quantum inner metaphysician in research papers and however, has rewarded these endeavours computing and the teleportation of photons. popularizations on the mistaken principle with phantom particles that, like waves, I have only one quibble with The Quan- that, as the Canadian philosopher Marshall can be both here and there; a theoretical tum Moment. Crease and Goldhaber sup McLuhan once put it, “mud sometimes structure that tells us only what might hap port their narrative with ‘interludes’ after gives the illusion of depth”. pen (not what will); and quantum systems each chapter, designed to provide techni Thus we smile at the comical pronounce seemingly connected over great distances, cal details, including some equations. The ments on physics by US actress Shirley giving rise to extended, non-local effects, or exposition here is a little drier than in the MacLaine, until the authors point out that what Albert Einstein called “spooky action main chapters, but does not need to be. The she could be paraphrasing similar pro at a distance”. material also necessarily repeats much of nouncements made 55 years earlier by the Einstein famously rejected the element what has already been covered, which can British physicist James Jeans. I have else of chance that lies at the heart of quantum become a little tedious. The authors suggest where argued that contemporary theoreti theory, declaring that God does not play that readers might prefer to skip these inter cal physics has become rather self-indulgent dice. He argued that quantum theory is not ludes; for linear readers like me, that does and self-referential, a malaise that I have complete. Those scientists who, like Ein not really work. called fairy-tale physics. Deep questions stein, are less inclined to accept that we have Those versed in quantum theory’s about the nature of reality tend to provoke reached an ultimate limit of what is know practical applications might be tempted this kind of response, and it surely finds its able remain firmly in denial. So, in the past to dismiss its many manifestations in origin in the quantum moment. ■ 40 years or so, the efforts of agents provo popular culture as what the authors call cateurs such as John Bell and Tony Leggett “fruitloopery”. And certainly, there is a Jim Baggott is the author of The Quantum have encouraged an orgy of sophisticated lot of nonsense out there. But, as Crease Story and Farewell to Reality. He is based in laser-based experiments to test the foun and Goldhaber make abundantly clear at Reading, UK. dations of quantum physics — what I have several points, many esteemed physicists e-mail: [email protected] LINGUISTICS the manual’s dismissal of the passive voice. Linguistic research, he later writes, has The write stuff shown that the pas sive actually “allows Steven Pinker’s provocative treatise on language use and the writer to direct the abuse would benefit from more data, finds Paul Raeburn. reader’s gaze, like a cin ematographer choos The Sense of Style: ing the best camera o conversation about the science Fowler’s Modern English Usage. We need a The Thinking angle”. What research, Person’s Guide to of language can get very far with new guide “infused by the spirit of scientific Writing in the 21st exactly? Pinker does out a mention of Steven Pinker, the skepticism”, he writes, using grammar and Century not tell us. His views NHarvard University cognitive scientist who research on “the mental dynamics of reading” STEVEN PINKER are informed by has not yet made linguistics as popular as to replace edicts with evidence. Pinker gave us Allen Lane: 2014. psycholinguistics; that football — but is working on it. In The Sense the science in The Language Instinct (William is his day job. But he of Style, he wants to give us the cognitive Morrow, 1994); in The Sense of Style he sets promises us science, so I expected to see data. science, linguistics and psychology behind out to offer its practical application. However, in this instance, and in many others, classic debates over proper English, from He covers much of the same ground as the data are not there. passive voice to split infinitives. the classic guides, including frequently mis Similarly, Pinker’s view on infinitives is Plenty of others have given us stuffy decrees used words (“fulsome” and “noisome”) and to split them “if you need to”, a conclusion intended to end the interminable wrangling, the serial comma. His problem with Strunk backed by dictionaries and style manuals — but Pinker is different. He is unhappy with & White, however, is that the authors lack not research. And when he quotes with admi the classic style manuals — including revered tools for analysing language, and so end up ration the opening line of Richard Dawkins’ texts such as Strunk & White (William Strunk “vainly appealing to the writer’s ‘ear’”. That’s Unweaving the Rainbow (Houghton Mifflin, and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style) or on page two. By page three, he is challenging 1998) — “We are going to die, and that Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality Life at the Speed of Light Edward Frenkel (Basic Books, 2014) J. Craig Venter (Abacus, 2014) With infinite passion, media-feted professor Biologist J. Craig Venter shares his life’s work of Edward Frenkel shares his rise to mathematical catalysing progress in biological engineering, greatness against a tide of Russian anti-Semitism. sequencing the human genome and ultimately Appeasing maths-haters, he uses a borscht recipe creating the first “synthetic cell” (Mycoplasma to explain quantum duality. (See Marcus du mycoides JCVI-syn1.0). (See Nathaniel Comfort’s Sautoy’s review: Nature 502, 36; 2013.) review: Nature 502, 436–437; 2013.) 18 SEPTEMBER 2014 | VOL 513 | NATURE | 309 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT AUTUMN BOOKS makes us the lucky ones” — he offers a EVOLUTION detailed explanation of why it works that is, again, short on science. Pinker is a good writer and a deeply humanistic one, and there are many Tribes like us bright moments here. His lists explain ing right and wrong usage with a range of examples (enervate means to sap, not Tim Lenton is intrigued by E.