The Ghost In The Atom

In this book, which has its origin in a series of radio broadcasts, Paul Davies interviews eight physicists involved in debating and testing quantum theory, with radically different views of its significance.

This book describes the author’s view of how the mind “thinks” at various levels of operation. These levels include nonconscious mind (as in spinal/brainstem reflexes and neuroendocrine controls), subconscious mind, and conscious mind. In the attempt to explain conscious mind, there is considerable critique of arguments over whether or not free will is an illusion. Finally, the author summarizes current leading theories for consciousness (Bayesian probability, chaos, and quantum mechanics) and then presents his own theory based on patterns of nerve impulses in circuits that are interlaced coherently into larger networks.

An anthology on the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb on Japan. In When We Say Hiroshima, Sadako writes: "When we say Hiroshima, / do people answer, gently, / Ah, Hiroshima? / Say Hiroshima, and hear Pearl Harbor. / Say Hiroshima, and hear Rape of Nanjing. / Say Hiroshima, and hear of women and children / thrown into trenches, doused with gasoline, / and burned alive in Manila ... Say Hiroshima, / and we don't hear, gently, / Ah, Hiroshima."

Are you a ghost or a machine? You don't need to be a superstitious believer to support the side of the ghosts. Machine people reduce everything to lifeless, mindless, purposeless atoms of matter: the ultimate little machines. For "ghost" people, reality reduces to dimensionless, mathematical singularities, which are none other than the hyperrational monadic souls posited by Pythagoras and Leibniz. Ghost people subscribe to atoms (minds) with atomic number zero, i.e. minds/souls are made of massless, dimensionless photons. Machine people start with hydrogen atoms, with atomic number one. All "ghost" entities are associated with zero and infinity. All machine people deny the existence of zero and infinity. Mathematically, these are the two numbers where the ghosts and the machines collide head on. This book is all about demonstrating that there are indeed ghosts in the machines.

The story of matter and the history of the cosmos from the perspective of a single oxygen atom, told with the insight and wit of one of the most dynamic physicists and writers working today. Through this astonishing work, he manages to stoke wonder at the powers and unlikely events that conspired to create our solar system, our ecosystem, and us.

In cartoon format, uses ghosts to explain the science of atoms.