Manjit Kumar is a born storyteller and one of a precious few who are at home in both physics and in the broader philosophical tradition.
His great achievement in this terrific new book consists in having set the record straight about the Einstein/Bohr debate. The vast majority of writers, less astute than he, have generally fallen in line with the Copenhagen doctrine without giving the matter much thought.
It's an expensive scandal. Consider that lasers and transistors are essentially quantum devices -- gizmos which underpin our high tech civilization. What happens when the foundations of quantum theory shift, then? Precisely.
So the big 411 comes near the end of the book, where we find evidence of a dramatic sea-change under way:
A theory that yields "maybe" as an answer should be recognized as an inaccurate theory.
~Gerard 't Hooft
Can it really be true that Einstein, in any significant sense, was as profoundly "wrong" as the followers of Bohr maintain? I do not believe so. I would, myself, side strongly with Einstein in his belief in a submiscroscopic reality, and with his conviction that present-day quantum mechanics is fundamentally incomplete.
~Roger Penrose
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