So what do we do? Help may be at hand in the form of a new branch of philosophical thought, unhelpfully, and I would even argue incorrectly, called 'trope ontology'. The first part of this weird expression is just a neologism for the expression 'property', and the second part refers to the philosophy of 'existence' (but, I would argue, the use of this expression is misleading, as the classical interpretation of ontology is exactly reversed in this new philosophy). So the idea that an elementary particle is a tiny billiard ball that interacts with others just as its macroscopic counterparts in a game of pool (or snookers) is deeply ingrained, and I cannot shake it. But the insights of quantum physics tell a story that is simply irreconcilable with this mental picture. For one thing, these particles do not have a well-defined position. Before we try to measure the position, there is a chance that we will find the particle here, there, and everywhere. And in the case of these 'particles', this is not just a phrase! The normal state of a particle is "superposition", a state in which it exists in different positions at once. Another thing that is vaguely unsettling is that a particle can be part of a system in which it gives up its individual existence. In the spooky phenomenon called "entanglement", two particles duplicate each other's properties but also the range of spacetime points at which they may be encountered by a measuring observer. So, does it still make sense to speak of entangled particles in the plural? Are there really 'two'? What happens to the ultra-fundamental human concept of countability when we deal with entangled states? Who knows. Language has developed to describe things that we need to talk about because they happen in a world accessible to our sensory toolkit. Quantum things do not. So we are left with metaphors. I have started to think about particles as a kind of non-local 'fog' that is spread out across the entire universe, with different densities at different, specific, spacetime locations. The particles detected by particle detectors are more like ripples in a field, or "excitations of the sensory material", as German philosopher and physicist Meinard Kuhlmann said in a recent article in Scientific American ("What is Real?", in Physics at the Limits, Scientific American Special Edition Winter 2015). But hold on. Perhaps the problem is that I am not expressing myself properly. Perhaps the universe is not out to upset me. Perhaps I am just not using the right words.

I'm still utterly bewildered by quantum mechanics, but dang Orzel sure did try. An excellent book. He helped me understand the uncertainty principle in a way I never had before, and if I couldn't quite make the leap to its application in the subsequent chapters, well, I truly don't think the fault lies with the author. I learned a ton, even if I still find it all too slippery to fully grasp. The approach is quite entertaining. The tone of the book is chatty and contains some truly awful puns involving dogs, which, if you can stand them, make it an attractive and lively read. However, don't be fooled - Emmy is no ordinary dog. She can reason with the informed leaps one may expect from a physics undergraduate, despite peppering her conversation with "squirrel", "bunny" and "chase". The book starts with a basic introduction to what quantum physics is, and how it differs from classical physics. From there it covers a number of topics, including Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the famous thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat. Each chapter starts with a conversation between the author and his dog Emmy about a particular topic. From there the author moves to an explanation of the topic and the experiments used to prove the theory correct. Consider a simple object, say a red, squishy ball. An adult recognises the object as a ball first, and then identifies properties attached to the object - round, spherical, squishy, red. An infant would not do this. An infant would recognise the properties first: there's something bright, it is squishy to the touch, and it feels the same way whichever way I hold it. Later on, the infant learns to refer to this bundle of properties by using a shortcut phonetic code. This code is the word 'ball'. Through usage, the infant will then learn to replace the bundle of properties with the linguistic label. At that point, the transition will be complete - the ball will have properties, the bundle of properties will no longer exist independently of its physical carrier, as they used to do in the observer's infancy.

Customer reviews

The real surprise for me was that the author goes deeper into the material than I anticipated. Somehow I had the expectation that this would be dumbed down a lot, but the latter half of each chapter proved to be quite informative. There is no room for actual proof or big equations in this book, but I don't think that that would have been fitting in this context. Well. For some time while I was reading the book, I was in two minds about my rating. In fact, I was in five minds, one for each potential rating for the book. I existed in a state of superposition of five allowable states at once, and the state vector describing this phenomenon is: This book is an overview of quantum physics. Now I know that most people would rather undergo painful dental surgery than spend their free time reading a book about science, but this book deserves a chance. The author uses the literary devise of explaining physics to his dog to make the topic accessible and interesting. He makes the point that dogs (and nonscientists) have an advantage in learning quantum physics because they have fewer preconceived notions of how the world works, so they can more easily accept some of the basic concepts. Language as we know it simply fails to do justice to these phenomena. We have not developed any words that would allow us to capture these dynamics, simply because we never had any need to.

If you kindly devote some of your time to reading this review, you may become frustrated. Because I am not referring directly to Chad's book very much. I am expressing thoughts that were triggered through my reading of his book, and I find these thoughts fascinating. Still, there is a link to the book, and you will find it in the middle of my blurb under the heading "A message to Chad".

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So perhaps we should not try. I feel that quantum physics, just as relativity theory, cannot be understood at a satisfactory intellectual level by reference to concepts we know. I am aware that in my own review, I have done the same, and introduced the metaphors of 'fog' and 'schizophrenic' to capture the behaviour of particles. But of course, while these words may help me to visualise what a state vector is a bit better, they may confuse others even more. The idea of this revised way of thinking about reality is to reverse the relationship between an object and its properties - and then get rid of the object. Meinard Kuhlmann, one proponent of this way of thinking, gives the example of a ball in the article I referenced earlier - I am going to go beyond what Meinard said, but my thoughts on this subject rest on his idea: Anyway, this book gives a good idea about quantum physics and the phenomena associated with it. The author knows his subject very well and knows how to explain it without relying on mathematical equations. I particularly liked how he explained Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. People usually tend to explain it as an inability of measurement, which is not the only reason of uncertainty. Randomness of particles is a law of nature. So it seems that the new and alien world of quantum physics may provide more than a deeper understanding of nature. If understood well, it may re-define our relationship with language itself, and remind us that words are simply shortcuts that we use to define bundles of properties. If we managed to understand this fact consciously, we would enhance our ability to grasp the dynamics around us on a philosophically deeper level than ever before. We would be able to recognise the limitations of language, and in so doing re-define somewhat the idea that we and 'reality' are somehow disparate entities. The study of quantum physics, combined with a conscious re-definition of how we perceive reality, may lead us again to the insight that a conscious intellect is the 'unverse observing itself', and even cross Wittgenstein's barrier that language is the final obstacle to reality.