The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications 9th printing Edition

by David Deutsch (Author)

144 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0140275414

ISBN-10: 014027541X

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A penetrating exploration of the new physics, including time travel, quantum computers, and the multiverse – as referenced in the film “Avengers: Endgame”

For David Deutsch, a young physicist of unusual originality, quantum theory contains our most fundamental knowledge of the physical world. Taken literally, it implies that there are many universes “parallel” to the one we see around us. This multiplicity of universes, according to Deutsch, turns out to be the key to achieving a new worldview, one which synthesizes the theories of evolution, computation, and knowledge with quantum physics. Considered jointly, these four strands of explanation reveal a unified fabric of reality that is both objective and comprehensible, the subject of this daring, challenging book.

The Fabric of Reality explains and connects many topics at the leading edge of current research and thinking, such as quantum computers (which work by effectively collaborating with their counterparts in other universes), the physics of time travel, the comprehensibility of nature and the physical limits of virtual reality, the significance of human life, and the ultimate fate of the universe. Here, for scientist and layperson alike, for philosopher, science-fiction reader, biologist, and computer expert, is a startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new, optimistic message about existence.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Deutsch, internationally acclaimed for his seminal publications on quantum computation, is a member of the Quantum Computation and Cryptography Research Group at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University.

Paperback: 390 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books; 9th printing edition (August 1, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 014027541X
ISBN-13: 978-0140275414
Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 143 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #30 in Astronomy & Astrophysics
- #30 in Mathematical Physics (Books)
- #72 in Physics (Books)

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JAD

The BEST book on Parallel Universes!!!

May 25, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is the best non-fiction book I have ever read. Deutsch has an amazing ability to articulate the most sophisticated high level physics in profoundly clear terms for non-physicists. He marches through each explanation, leaving no question unanswered, clearly painting word pictures that make every nuance of his ideas in quantum physics as clear and beautiful as a DaVinci painting. This is the BEST book on the subject of parallel universes and time travel available to non-physicists (and I have read them all, including F. A. Wolfe, Michio Kaku, etc). If you would like to read a Science Fiction novel on time travel that matches his theory of Parallel Universes and Time Travel, check out the following book, also available at Amazon.com The Hiroshima Agenda: "Does the NSA have a working time machine?"

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Omri

A physicist that explains...

July 23, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

...instead of relying on the reductionist creed “it doesn’t matter why - the predictions agree with experiment, and that should be enough”.

That’s what my quantum physics professor said when I pushed on interpreting the results of the double slit experiment.

My disappointment with that answer led me to abandon physics.

Had Deutsch been my professor, I would have stayed in it.

Back to the book: I found the sections on epistemology and quantum computation to be less elucidating than the stunningly simple logic that he uses to justify the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it’s all fascinating.

The connections between seemingly disparate domains (QM, theory of computation, genetics, and epistemology) are novel and reminiscent of Godel, Escher, Bach.

Chapter 2 is a must-read and the rest of the book is highly worthwhile for the patient reader.

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Kenn Brody

This will change your perception of the nature of reality.

November 27, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Professor Deutsch gives us a update on the nature of physical reality from three aspects - the nature of understanding in science, the reality of the multiverse, and the limits of virtual reality as a true test of reality. Any one of these is likely to be a revelation to the reader, and even a former physicist like myself cannot read this without a perceptual shift.

You will not have to do higher math. You will have to think. This is NOT a review of current science, it's a phase transition in the understanding of the nature of reality.

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Nelson B.

Very good book, read full review for my nitpicks.

July 27, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Overall 5 stars, extremely interesting and good read. I also find the main thesis fairly convincing but that doesn't figure into the rating much in this case, for me. There are a few points that I feel were not material to the main point of the book and which were also poorly argued, and if I were editing the book I'd simply remove them-- Deutsch's seeming insistence on some kind of libertarian free will (I think he even says explicitly "you could have done otherwise") as a consequence of Many Worlds, a somewhat frantic argument at the end of the book where he attacks a strawman of evolutionary psychology trying to make a genealogical case against moral realism, and the chapter on time travel.

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Atheen

Not the best place to start on any of the topics included

May 6, 2002

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Until I got well over half way through the book, I found Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality difficult to put together. It took completing the book and then rereading points I had highlighted throughout the text to make sense of it at all. While I found some of the information helpful and instructive and some of it intriguing, I'm not altogether sure I would recommend it as a way of finding out about the "Four Strands" of which Dr. Deutsch composes his ultimate reality. Reading some of the works he includes in his bibliography might be a more helpful starting point for the average person interested in the subject. Among these are The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, also by Dawkins, Popper's Conjectures and Refutations and The Myth of the Framework and Weinberg's The First Three Minutes.
Although I agree with the author, and with E. O. Wilson (Consiliance), that a certain synthesis among the various branches of human knowledge are a necessary prerequisite for advancing much beyond what the 20ieth century has accomplished, I'm not certain that I'm yet prepared for or convinced of the need for a multiverse explanation of reality.
The author makes some very important points about science which bear repeating for those who have not yet heard them. For instance, "A scientific argument is intended to persuade us that a given explanation is the best one available. It does not and could not say anything about how that explanation will fare when, in the future, it is subjected to new types of criticism and compared with explanations that have yet to be invented (p. 64)." This is a fundamental principle of the scientific process that escapes many lay individuals and even some scientists.
He also notes that scientific theories must do more than simply predict the future, since "Shoddy explanations that yield correct predictions are two a penny, as UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy-theorists and pseudo-scientists of every variety should (but never do) bear in mind (p. 65)."
More importantly still in describing scientific methodology the author writes, "Here I must mention an asymmetry which is important in the philosophy and methodology of science: the asymmetry between experimental refutation and experimental confirmation. Whereas an incorrect prediction automatically renders the underlying explanation unsatisfactory, a correct prediction says nothing at all about the underlying explanation (p.65)." This too is often forgotten or misunderstood by those who do not do research of this kind.
In general the book tries to cover too much in too small a space. Unless the reader is very well read, he/she would be better off starting somewhere else before tackling this book.

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The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications 9th printing Edition