Alternate Realities: How Science Shapes Our Vision of the World

Science is a shatterer of worlds, exploding our worldview and then creating it anew. This poetic work traces how our ever-increasing knowledge of science shapes the way we see the world and the universe, and colors our basic sense of reality. Science writer Joel Davis depicts how the interplay of man’s fertile imagination coupled with startling scientific discoveries has not only contributed to greater advances, but to new concepts of reality itself. Davis takes us on a voyage through time as he vividly paints a sweeping picture of reality at critical points in history through today. He recounts in detail the revolutionary contributions made by courageous and brilliant thinkers from Galileo and Newton to Hubble and Wheeler – people who, through their flair for insight and invention, dared to rearrange our place in the solar system and stretch our concept of a universe to an immense, awesome chasm. From the macrocosm of the universe to the microcosm of the quantum world, Davis shows how our vision of reality evolves and adapts. Just as he vividly evokes a graphic picture of the big bang theory, he dives into the quantum world and infuses it with life. Through his talent to explain the unexplainable, he challenges us to imagine one of the most riveting revelations of the New Physics: that numerous realities are possible at any given moment.