The book presents the conclusions of a psychologist
seeking to make sense of contemporary particle physics
as described in a number of popular science texts and
media articles, written by physicists, seeking to
explain the workings of the sub-atomic world. The
accounts, it is argued, are a) mutually exclusive and
contradictory, and b) metaphysical or magical in
essence. Themes of the book include: a discussion of the
way we allow physicists to invent things that have no
perceivable qualities, on the grounds that they must be
there because otherwise their preconceptions are wrong
or their sums don t work; that, from a psychological
perspective, contemporary theory in particle physics has
the same properties as any other act of faith, and the
same limitations as belief in God; and that physics has
now reached a point at which increasingly physicists
research their own psychological constructions rather
than anything which is unambiguously there or real. It
encourages people to ask basic questions of the type we
often use to question the existence of God; such as
Where is he/it? , Show me? , Do it then , When did it
happen? , How do you know it exists? , and so on, and
suggests that people take a leaf out of Dawkins text,
The God Delusion, but apply it to high-end physics as
much as to religious dogma: turning water into wine is a
mere conjuring trick compared to producing an entire
universe out of nothing.
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