Quantations: A Guide to Quantum Living in the 21st Century

by Joseph Stirt (Author)

14 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0595745364

ISBN-10: 0595745369

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Product details

Hardcover: 112 pages
Publisher: iUniverse (January 21, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0595745369
ISBN-13: 978-0595745364
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 14 customer ratings
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,678,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7417 in Quantum Theory (Books)
- #9031 in Quotation Reference Books
- #40408 in Reference (Books)

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Customer reviews

5 star		48%
4 star		8%
3 star		25%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		18%

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TamR

I love this book!

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2012

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Having followed Joe Stirt's blog for years, and being an admitted fan of his mind and humor, I was intrigued when I learned that he had written a book that married quantum physics to everyday life. Read it sequentially or take any page, any passage and read it randomly. It's guaranteed to provoke a thought, raise a question or fire a synapse. Can something be both true and false simultaneously? This book is easy to read yet hard to fathom. You can work your mind or let it flow over you, either way, it's a great read.

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Clifford Marsiglio

Finally On Kindle!

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2012

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I've had this book as an old ragged paperback that I found used, by someone that had obviously gone though it a few times with a highlighter and ballpoint pen.

Its a book of quotations on life in the 21st century as cultivated by Dr. Stirt. Open it up randomly, read a few, give ponderance to the words and understand the dharma of Joe.

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Former Rater

Quantumly quirky .. fun at many levels of spin and charm

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2002

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Take a facile mind and let it play with the dichotomy between the quantum state and the macro universe - throw in a dash of Twain & Bierce and Darwin & Escher and you have Quantations. A slim book with many big ideas.
Well worth the price and a fun read.

6 people found this helpful

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Former Rater

Almost a decade ago, to the day

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2012

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I reviewed the bound edition. My review:

Take a facile mind and let it play with the dichotomy between the quantum state and the macro universe - throw in a dash of Twain & Bierce and Darwin & Escher and you have Quantations. A slim book with many big ideas.
Well worth the price and a fun read.

I come out of my "former" status to stand by my original review. Well done, Dr. Stirt!

One person found this helpful

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wistrade

Better than a "Brief History of Time" Hawking

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2008

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It's just damn good horse sense with a ton of thought behind each word.
A subject Hawking's tries to explain in "a brief history of time" made into unlimited poetic thought. Great job!!! to the author and it's originality as demonstrated in Quantations' name. I think Bob Dylan would like this book.

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Niro

not a guide to anything

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2013

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The book is a bunch of unrelated quotes.
Make sure you know what you buy. Because it's definitely not 'a guide to quantum living in the 21st century'.

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Mind Boggles

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2002

Joseph A Stirt, M.D. uses quantum mechanics (the final mathematical formulation of the quantum theory, a theory of the mechanics of atoms, molecules, and other physical systems that are subject to the uncertainty principle) to interpret life.

The quantum theory and the theory of relativity form the theoretical basis of modern physics. The quantum theory was developed over a period of thirty years through the efforts of many scientists.

While, Newtonian physics helps describe the orbit of the planets, quantum physics describes how electrons surround the nucleus of an atom and other subatomic actions. Atoms and subatomic particles are not solid, they are clouds of energy.

Electrons don't orbit like planets, instead they form blurred clouds around the nucleus. The nucleus is made of protons and neutrons also known as hadrons. Hadrons are made up of three smaller particles called quarks that are "glued" together by tiny particles called "gluons."

According to old theories, energy was treated as a continuous phenomenon, while matter occupies a very specific region of space. In quantum theory, energy is emitted and absorbed in tiny amounts. An individual bundle of invisible energy called a "quantum" behaves in some situations like a particle of matter.

In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that not only do light waves sometimes exhibit particle like properties, as in the photoelectric effect and atomic spectra, but particles may also exhibit wavelike properties.

The light given off or absorbed by an atom has certain frequencies (wavelength). The quantum theory shows that those frequencies correspond to definite energies of the light quanta, or "photons." The electrons of the atom can only have certain allowed energy values and when an electron changes from one level to another, a quantum of energy is emitted OR absorbed whose frequency is directly proportional to the energy difference between the two levels.

After the discovery of the nuclear atom by Rutherford in 1911, the quantum theory was used to explain atomic structure and atomic spectra, showing the connection between the electrons' energy levels and the frequencies of light given off and absorbed.

The uncertainty principle places an absolute, theoretical limit on the combined accuracy of certain pairs of simultaneous, related measurements. The accuracy of a measurement is given by the uncertainty in the result. If a measurement is exact, the uncertainty is zero. However, only one of a pair of quantities can be measured precisely. The value of the other must remain unknown.

Perhaps Joseph A Stirt is a quantum mechanics philosopher who believes we live in two worlds.

There are things that happen in the quantum world that he would consider "supernatural." Have you ever thought about particles existing and not existing at the same time or a hundred trillion neutrinos whistling through your body every second.

Neutrinos are similar to the more familiar electron, however they are electrically neutral! Their spin is also always oriented in the direction opposite to their velocity.

F. Reines said Neutrinos are "... the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being".

With Neutrinos flying through us can we really believe reality is as "concrete" as we perceive it to be?

By creating this book, the author is not attempting to be intellectual, but rather he is making an attempt to make sense of life. He is encouraging the reader to take hold of the idea that great forces have a part in our lives and that if we could somehow tap into this force, our lives would be more interesting.

This book is a collection of quotes discovered by the author over the last 40 years. If you want to find a source, you can look it up in the Notes. I would almost have preferred to see the source next to the quote, however that might have broken up the thought patterns. So you must let the words flow into your mind like little neutrinos without a home.

His inspiration comes from many sources including:

The Age of Spiritual Machines by R. Kurzweil

The Holographic Universe by M. Talbot

Physics and Philosophy by W. Heisenberg

You may want to start reading some of the works he lists in the Notes. They
do seem rather intriguing.

"In a general sense, I'm trying to make some sense of things." - Joseph A. Stirt, M.D.

The first quote in the book says: "Only the incomprehensible is worth understanding."

How can you not love this book? This is a quote from "Only the Incomprehensible" by T. Parks, "Destiny" 2000

I was immediately INTRIGUED.

While reading the quotes, you might want to highlight the books/articles they come from and then do further study. There is space in the back of the book to write in your own thoughts. Perhaps at some point the author will include not only a few pages on his own life, but also a section explaining his research.

This book will spin your mind in circles in some places and that is a good thing. We need inspiration, we need to think about deeper issues than what we are going to wear, eat or watch on TV.

I love complex sentences or word puzzles that I call "mind boggles." This book has plenty of "mind boggles" to entertain you for weeks on end.

Here are is one to entertain you:

"Decoherence must cause the universe to somehow split in two, spawning this world and another parallel "mirror world."

(Decoherence describes the regular interactions between an object and its environment. A set of interactions that allows concrete behaviors to emerge from the possibilities quantum theory allows.)

In a world where reading books just to find quotes takes valuable time away from other pursuits, this book gives you a taste of all the intellectual deserts in regards to quantum physics. It will also make you do your own research in order to understand scientific theories.

Honestly, you don't have to be a scientist to enjoy this book, you must only be willing to "imagine."

Intellectually Decadent.

~The Rebecca Review

4 people found this helpful

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Kevin W

What? ...What?

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2012

This book was recommended to me. Here are some quotations from Quantations, and my thoughts about them:

"Only the incomprehensible is worth understanding."
[Me: I don't understand; oh, but now I do; hey, wait a second...]

"All human experience is ordinary, not quantum. Whether our reliance on classical modes of perception is a permanent feature of the human condition remains to be seen."
[Me: Oh, you mean like, because we're not electrons?]

"Death is simply the collapse of the superpositions we call "life." The ultimate decoherence."
[Me: I've seen loved ones die. This is both idiotic and insulting.]

"Look at it in quantum light."
[Me: As contrasted with that non-quantum light?]

"Matter is thought, and thought is matter."
[Me: Yeah... no, it's not.]

Is this a joke? What a load of rubbish. People actually paid 21 bucks to read this drivel? This book is so full of hot air, it must float. I worry I may have lost a couple IQ points just reading the selections from the 'Look Inside' feature.

4 people found this helpful

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