What Is Real?

I love this book because it tells the story of the discovery of one of the greatest scientific theories: quantum physics – from a human point of view. There are diagrams but no equations. Becker narrates his story in a chronological order, involving the main protagonists behind the development of the physics of the subatomic world. But Becker does not just write as a historian. He is a physicist himself who is unhappy with the most popular interpretation of quantum mechanics: the Copenhagen interpretation. That is why the book bears the title: What is Real? For the trouble with quantum… show more.

Becker’s book is the most reliable popular account of the history of quantum theory from 1925 you can find. Many of the common myths about that history are dispelled, and much attention is paid to later figures like Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett, who kept the discussion of foundational issues alive. A good introduction for the general reader.

If you thought that only Psychology would be full of controversy and taboo, think of the status of research into dreams or parapsychology, you will be surprised by Adam Becker’s account of the fight on the interpretation of quantum physics, i.e. on the foundations of everything. Mobbing, censuring, ridiculing of researchers who tried to find alternatives to Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation to quantum measurement prevailed for decades. If you want to find out how researchers at the frontier area of exact science behave like guards to a holy temple or like Stalinist persecutors, i.e. find out about the mechanisms underlying… show more.