I largely agree with Baggott’s assessment, though I am less critical of research on the foundations of quantum mechanics and I could quibble with his take on black hole evaporation, but it seems somewhat besides the point. But this slow start has the benefit of making the book fairly self-contained I believe you don’t need to bring more than high-school physics to make sense of Baggott’s explanations. It takes some enthusiasm to get through the book’s first part. The book suffers somewhat from its rather heavy, philosophical opening chapter, followed by the inevitable but necessary terminology, but the later chapters pick up in pace. Having done that, he evaluates whether the “fairy tales” are worth being taken seriously, concluding (unsurprisingly given the book’s title) that, no, they’re not. Then he goes through the background knowledge (general relativity, quantum mechanics, standard model). Baggott first establishes a basis, spelling out what he will take the purpose of scientific explanation to be. His book is a well-researched and methodological approach to these speculative theories. Baggott collectively refers to them as “fairy tale science.” “Farewell to Reality,” which appeared in 2013, is a critical take on supersymmetry, string theory, multiverses, many worlds, and related ideas. And having enjoyed that, I had a look at his previous books. Indeed, I didn’t take note of Jim Baggott’s writing until I was asked to review one of his more recent books for Physics World. Not sure how I missed “Farewell to Reality” when it came out.

Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth

Sabine hossenfelder books