|
Physicists do not discover the physical world, they invent
a physical world -- they invent a story that fits as closely as possible the facts
they create in their experimental apparatus. In the words of Einstein, "Physical
concepts are free creations of the human mind." Or, as the poet Muriel Rukeyser
puts it, "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." From
Aristotle to contemporary physics, Bruce Gregory tells the story of attempts to
answer these questions by inventing new languages. For physicists, explanations
that lack predictive power are like Kipling's "just-so" stories. When
a vocabulary fails to predict accurately, scientists search for a new way to talk
-- a new description of the world. Physicists do not always agree on the same
theories, or even on the same facts, but they agree on the procedures to be followed
in testing theories and establishing facts -- in deciding whether to continue
to rely on an existing vocabulary or to attempt to invent a new one. An
economist's world is made up of markets, supply, and demand. A mathematician's
world is made up of imaginary numbers and infinite sets. The physical world is
made up of leptons and quarks because physicists talk about their world in terms
of leptons and quarks. This is the vocabulary that gives them the power to predict
the outcome of their experiments. The word real is not descriptive. Real is an
honorific term we bestow on our most cherished beliefs -- our most treasured ways
of speaking. Using non-technical language, Inventing
Reality tells how physicists struggle to invent a language powerful enough
to talk about the world. The author draws on ingenious metaphors and concrete
examples from everyday life to show how the language of physics works. In the
process, he develops a powerful and provocative way of looking at the relationship
between language and the world.
Bruce Gregory is Associate Director
of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. For many years he was a member
of the senior staff of the National Academy of Sciences and has written extensively
about topics as diverse as the future of astronomy and the impact of man-made
chemicals on the earth's ozone layer. For over twenty years he has made science
intelligible to audiences ranging from junior high school students to the general
public and Members of Congress. |
