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A review by anitaofplaybooktag
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed by Jim Al-Khalili
3.0
I really couldn't rate this book in all fairness because I'm way too conflicted about it. The author had a wonderful voice, and the book is beautifully illustrated. I seriously give him five stars for effort. He really, really tried to make this stuff understandable. He used examples. He used pictures. He didn't use sophisticated language.
Nonetheless, I just couldn't really understand a whole lot of it. I was doing pretty good in the first few chapters -- and only because I have taken a couple of years of calculus. But later on, I was just lost and also a bit bored because some of the concepts were just eluding me, and you needed those concepts to understand the latter part of the book.
I did come away with incredible admiration for folks who actually do understand this stuff and can apply it to real world applications. Because it seriously is the most counterintuitive thing I've ever come across.
A part of me would like to try another book on the subject to see I would come away any more enlightened.
A part of me would like to remain blissfully ignorant.
Another very strange thing about this book is that some of the concepts are so counter to reason that it really casts doubt in my mind on my own atheistic beliefs which are seriously derived from reason and rationale thought.
Quantum physics really seems to highlight the limits of our understanding while simultaneously showing how brilliant we are. We can create predictive mathematical formulas that WORK under all sorts of experimental conditions. But we don't know why they work.
Brain. hurts. bad.
All in all, hats off to the author for even attempting to bring this subject down to layperson's terms even if he wasn't 100% successful with this particular layperson.