Add quantum to anything, and it sounds believable and scientific and explains everything and nothing. Ghosts become real, you can heal yourself, and whatnot. And then we get lost in what we know about the universe and the humans in it. I loved Hossenfelder’s book. It gave a rudimentary knowledge of how we understand the universe, the physics governing it, and our place in all of that. It goes over things like the multiverse, is math more than just a language, atoms and us, free will, and whether there is meaning behind it all. She interviews other physicists and gives them the floor to state their opinions even when they somewhat disagree with her.
Hossenfelder just doesn’t state things as facts and then move on. She explains her reasoning and why she thinks physics proves that there’s no free will, in her opinion, why determinism is the way of the universe. And she does it so well that even the hard parts are easy to follow. I think this book is a valid effort to answer the questions that have pestered humankind since the dawn of time. However, I have to warn you, there’s no great insight into what a good life is or clear answers that leave you satisfied that the code has now been cracked. There’s still so much we don’t know and understand. She leaves the majority of philosophical questions out of the book, handling most about existence, consciousness, and physical laws.
As I stated before, I loved the book, but I feel the book is insufficient in answering the question it set out to answer. Hossenfelder is more vigorous in proving wrong the argumentation against her assumptions than in taking a hard poke at her own views. She also has fallen into the trap of thinking about our brains as machines, not understanding how and what makes our brains function. She dismisses most of the neuroscience that states the importance of interaction between the matter and the environment on the macroscale, influencing decision-making, free will, and the said consciousness. Hossenfelder dismisses the macroscale importance with reductionism and its scientific status. For her, the microscale governs everything, so the macroscale can go and scurry off. She gives her hurrah to statistics and how it predicts human behavior (she doesn’t even leave room for that it can predict.) I feel that’s a huge oversight on her part. But I understand why. This is a physics book.
The book is good, and it should be on your reading list even when you might disagree with her statements.
Thank you for reading ❤ Have a magical day!
K.A. Ashcomb 
The book attempts to bridge the gap between scientific understanding and speculative, non-scientific beliefs, particularly concerning celestial phenomena. This dual approach is evident early in Chapter 2, where the author introduces concepts that diverge significantly from established scientific principles. Specifically, the author posits the ability to traverse time, both backward to 3978 BCE and forward to 2022, through the application of an unspecified “right evolution law.” This assertion is problematic from a scientific standpoint, as no known evolutionary laws or scientific theories support such temporal manipulation. Evolutionary biology, for instance, describes the gradual change in heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations, a process fundamentally distinct from time travel.
The scientific community relies on empirical evidence and rigorous methodologies to establish facts. The age of life on Earth, for example, is determined through well-established scientific techniques such as geological dating, radiometric dating of rocks and fossils, and the analysis of microfossils. These methods provide highly reliable data, with findings often exhibiting a high degree of certainty, approaching what scientists might colloquially refer to as “100%,” while acknowledging that absolute certainty is a philosophical rather than a scientific concept. Furthermore, the foundational principles and methodologies of science are distinct from those of religious or spiritual beliefs, which often operate on different epistemological frameworks.
Docent Bijan Dargahi
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