Sign in
Holiday Gift Guide
Books
Kids
Popular
Authors & Events
Gifts & Deals
Audio
Sign In
May 04, 2021 | ISBN 9780525521921 Pre-Order
May 04, 2021 | ISBN 9780525521938 Pre-Order
May 04, 2021 | 360 Minutes Pre-Order
Also available from:
Available from:
May 04, 2021 | ISBN 9780525521921
May 04, 2021 | ISBN 9780525521938
May 04, 2021 | ISBN 9780593395165
360 Minutes
From a young British scientist, a groundbreaking exploration of a radically different approach to physicsThere is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of the most fundamental phenomena in physics, yet have traditionally been assumed to be impossible to incorporate into fundamental scientific explanations. They are facts not about what is (the actual) but about what could be (counterfactuals).According to physicist Chiara Marletto, laws about things being possible or impossible may generate an alternative way of providing explanations. This fascinating, far-reaching approach holds promise for revolutionizing the way fundamental physics is formulated and for providing essential tools to face existing technological challenges–from delivering the next generation of information-processing devices beyond the universal quantum computer to designing AIs. Each chapter in the book delineates how an existing vexed open problem in science can be solved by this radically different approach and it is augmented by short fictional stories that explicate the main point of the chapter. As Marletto demonstrates, contemplating what is possible can give us a more complete and hopeful picture of the physical world.
Chiara Marletto is a Research Fellow at Wolfson College and the University of Oxford Department of Physics. Her main research focus is theoretical physics, but she enjoys dabbling in theoretical biology, epistemology, and Italian literature. Some of her recent research… More about Chiara Marletto
Advance praise for The Science of Can and Can’t:“I enjoyed this book very much, not least because of the freshness of its approach to a subject that can easily become hard for the non-scientific mind to grasp. The theory of ‘can and can’t’ is an intriguing way of describing problems that are not only scientific (it describes very well what a storyteller does, for instance), and Marletto’s account of some things I thought I more or less understood (the nature of digital information, for one) illuminated them from an angle that showed them more clearly than I’d seen them before.” —Philip Pullman
Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network
Stay in Touch
By clicking Sign Up, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
