转一篇国外读者对原著的反对意见
2016-12-21
转一篇国外读者对原著的反对意见，原文及链接如下。
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208284.A_World_Without_Time
Danny Brynes
Recommends it for: losers, philosophers(same thing)
I was so offended by how bad this book was I actually burnt it. I would not wish to inflict this book on anyone.
Let's start by getting some basic facts straight:
1) Both Godel and Einstein were geniuses who made very fundamental contributions at a rather young age. Godel made one major contribution and Einstein made several contributions including his phD which is one of the most cited papers in physics - it is the use of diffusion in hot liquids to measure a certain constant, but the technique developed into Brownian motion and stochastic calculus which is the basis of modern finance and also quantum field theory. That said by 1949 - when this paper Yourgrau makes such a big deal about - both of these people were well, well past their prime. Einstein wasted the more than the last decade of his life trying to disprove Quantum Field Theory - currently the most successful physical theory in history with absolute 100% agreement with every single experiment ever performed with an accuracy compared to measuring the width of the US with an error of a hairwidth. Godel tried to prove the "Continuum Hypothesis" which we know know is not provable. In between tilting at these windmills, Godel came up with one solution to General Relativity's equations.
2) We know for a fact that Godel's solution does not even remotely describe any part of our universe. We know - and have done for 50 years - that our universe is expanding in all directions. Godel's universe is static everywhere. Hence whilst Godel's solution maybe of theoretical interest it bears zero relevence to the real world. Hence it's neglect. Full Stop. No conspiracy.
3) We know for a fact that Yourgrau clearly hasn't the slightest clue about the subject on which he pontificates. Here are some howlers:
Whilst claiming it is "OK" not to be able to follow Godel's theorem, he make a completely wrong explanation of it that makes it clear HE doesn't follow it.
He makes some false historical claims - Church invented recursive functions not Godel.
He clearly doesn't understand the difference between acausal and non-casual. Acausal means there are no causes, non-causal means that a violation of causality. Godel's solution is acausal, not non-causal. We have in fact known for years that any solution to General Relativity cannot be non-causal.
So in the end this book is meant to be for people who admire the Emperor's wonderful new outfit. It is only good for people who will avoid like the plague anybody who has even a passing knowledge of this field, so unless you regularly only attend philosophy conferences I'd get a serious book on these topics written by someone with a clue.
If you buy it, then the sequel will be your fault.