Philip Ball sets himself the task of explaining quantum mechanics
In the year Richard Feynman won a Nobel prize, he famously said: ‘I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.’
In Beyond weird, Philip Ball sets himself the task of explaining this notoriously mind-bending area of science. He explains from the start that the challenge is not the equations themselves, but rather what they appear to say about the universe we live in. In contrast to the ‘shut up and calculate’ position taken by Feynman and many others, Ball urges the reader to ‘do better’, ‘push back’ and be exhilarated by what a real quantum theory might look like if it existed.