{"product_id":"9780141979168","title":"Einstein's Unfinished Revolution : The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum by Lee Smolin","description":"Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever  formulated. The only problem with it, argues Lee Smolin, is that it is  wrong ... a fount of provocative ideas ... lucid, upbeat and, finally,  optimistic' Graham Farmelo, Nature Human beings, says Lee Smolin, author of The Trouble With Physics,  have always had a problem with the  boundary between reality and  fantasy, confusing our representations of  the world with the world  itself. Nowhere is this more evident than in  quantum physics, which  forms the basis for our understanding of  everything from elementary  particles to the behaviour of materials.   While  quantum  mechanics is currently our best theory of nature at an atomic  scale, it  has many puzzling qualities - qualities that preclude realism  and  therefore give an incomplete description of nature. Rather than   question this version of quantum mechanics, however, whole groups of   physicists have embraced it as correct and rejected realism.  Subscribing  to a kind of magical thinking, they believe that what is  real is far  beyond the world we perceive: indeed, that the 'true' world  is hidden  from our perception.   Back in the 1920s Einstein, both  a realist  and a physicist, believed that it was necessary to go beyond  quantum  mechanics to discover what was missing from a true theory of  the atoms.  This was Einstein's unfinished mission, and it is Lee  Smolin's too.   Not  only will this new model of quantum physics  form the basis of solutions  to many of the outstanding problems of  physics, but, crucially, it is a  theory that is realist in nature. At a  time when science is under  attack, and with it the belief in a real  world in which facts are either  true or false, never has the importance  of building science on the  correct foundations been more urgent.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56225142178165,"sku":"9780141979168","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141979168.jpg?v=1762228889","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9780141979168","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}