Escape from Shadow Physics

An engaging and razor-sharp attack on the orthodoxy of modern physics, and a bold new idea about the structure of reality.

For 70 years, mathematical physicist Adam Kay argues, physics has laboured under delusions. ‘When it comes to atoms,’ the founding quantum physicist Neils Bohr once wrote, ‘language can only be used as in poetry.’ Since the earliest days of quantum mechanics, its founders have firmly stressed that what goes on inside an atom is impossible to rationally describe. Kay fundamentally disagrees. Escape from Shadow Physics is his fiery rebuke to Bohr’s mentality and his theory, arguing that quantum physics is as logical, reasonable, and intuitive as any other scientific theory — or at least it will be, if scientists will let it.

Kay aims to free us from the shackles of Bohr’s obscure theorising — which Bertrand Russell referred to as ‘the shadow physics of our time’ — and to restore the basic principles of scientific inquiry to quantum mechanics. Thanks to Kay’s cutting-edge work at MIT, a genuine understanding of quantum mechanics may be just around the corner. Building on his research and from the original ideas of pioneers such as Einstein and de Broglie, Kay calls for a new understanding of quantum physics: the Ensemble Interpretation. Through bouncing droplets of oil, his team has observed quantum mechanical behaviour emerging on a macroscopic scale — a stunning breakthrough, indicating that quantum and classical physics are not as irreconcilable as we have been led to think.