The island of knowledge the limits of science and the search for meaning marcelo gleiser

by Marcelo Gleiser

Do all questions have answers? How much can we know about the world? Is there such a thing as an ultimate truth? To be human is to want to know, but what we are able to observe is only a tiny portion of what's 'out there.' In The Island of Knowledge, physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence. In so doing, he reaches a provocative science, the main tool we use to find answers, is fundamentally limited. These limits to our knowledge arise both from our tools of exploration and from the nature of physical the speed of light, the uncertainty principle, the impossibility of seeing beyond the cosmic horizon, the incompleteness theorem, and our own limitations as an intelligent species. Recognizing limits in this way, Gleiser argues, is not a deterrent to progress or a surrendering to religion. Rather, it frees us to question the meaning and nature of the universe while affirming the central role of life and ourselves in it. Science can and must go on, but recognizing its limits reveals its true to know the universe is to know ourselves. Telling the dramatic story of our quest for understanding, The Island of Knowledge offers a highly original exploration of the ideas of some of the greatest thinkers in history, from Plato to Einstein, and how they affect us today. An authoritative, broad-ranging intellectual history of our search for knowledge and meaning, The Island of Knowledge is a unique view of what it means to be human in a universe filled with mystery.

Genres: Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Physics, History, Audiobook, Popular Science

305 pages, Paperback

First published June 3, 2014

Reviews

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the philosophy bashing we've seen lately from celebrity scientists like Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gleiser is breath of fresh air. Some of what he says about philosophy is a bit sophomoric by professional standards (his treatment of ancient Greek philosophy is okay for a popular book, but some of his comments on morality would be mediocre in Philosophy 101). A lot of the middle of the book gets a bit bogged down on details about quantum physics, which is interesting but goes on a bit longer than needed to make Gleiser's point. I almost went with a three star rating.

But I can forgive the faults of this book, and give it four stars, for the fact that Gleiser is a scientist who is willing to question the sort of dogmatic scientism that seems to be gaining popularity these days. Besides, I'll go easy on him because I'm sure everything I say about science sounds sophomoric to a professional scientist! (Thought experiment on my scientism point: imagine a literature professor with no scientific training denigrating physics - would the media take that person seriously?).

I'm particularly thrilled to read a scientist who admits that the history of science shows that we ought to be quite a bit less confident we've gotten things right today than most of us are. Gleiser's metaphor of the island of knowledge, in fact, requires that every expansion of knowledge also involves an expansion of the boundaries between knowledge and ignorance.

Not that I'm science bashing. I love science! But what I love about science is what Gleiser seems to love about it, too: science is not a dry collection of facts or data sets or even a mere source of economically lucrative technology, it's one of the ways we as humans brush up against our own ignorance and expand our minds. On this point science and philosophy, while not exactly the same, have a lot in common. It's refreshing to read a scientist who understands this.

(More on my blog: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...)

[John Gribbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is the original version of a review that appeared in edited form in the WSJ, 7 June 2014.

The Island of Knowledge

Marcelo Gleiser

Basic Books



In the words of the Lovin’ Spoonful song She is Still a Mystery, written by John B Sebastian, “the more I see, the more I see there is to see.”This should be Marcelo Gleiser’s theme tune, since, as a refreshing antidote to those pessimists who argue that the end of physics is in sight, he claims that there are no limits to science and that there will always be unknowable things. “The more we know,”he says, “the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask.”This is a liberating insight, which makes science an open-ended pursuit, a “romance with the unknown”.

This is brought home by the allegory implicit in the title of his book. What we know, according to Gleiser, is like an island in a sea of the unknown. As we learn more, the island grows; but as the island grows its circumference, the boundary between what is known and what is unknown, also grows. The more we see, indeed, the more we see there is to see. If the sea is infinite, this process will continue forever; and the message we take away from the book is that the sea is indeed infinite.

All this is set in the context of a relatively conventional but very accessibly presented resume of the development of science (in particular, physics) from ancient times to the present day. The story is presented in three parts. First, what might loosely be called cosmology, the study of the Universe at large. This is good. Secondly, we have the story of the very small, essentially the story of quantum physics. This is excellent. Finally, we have some speculations about mind and matter. This is the weakest part of the book, but only in comparison with the quality of the earlier sections.

One of the key features of the story he tells is a point that I often emphasise when discussing how science works with non-scientists. It is a common misconception that scientists are interested, above all, in getting confirmation of the predictions of their existing theories —in physics the so-called “standard model”, which among other things predicted the existence of the Higgs particle. Physicists were, of course, quite pleased that the particle was indeed found. But they (even Peter Higgs himself!) would have been a lot more pleased if the theory had been found to be incomplete, and there was no sign of the predicted particle. That would have given them the opportunity to learn new things —to expand the island of knowledge. For example, Newton’s theory of gravity failed to explain details of the orbit of Mercury around the Sun, pointing the way towards Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Newton’s theory still works within its limitations, but there is more to gravity than Newton knew. Perhaps there is more to gravity than Einstein knew.

Gleiser’s assessment of the future of science is distinctly different from that of many —perhaps a majority -- of scientists and commentators. Back in 1996, John Horgan made a splash with his book proclaiming “The End of Science”. His argument was that the foundations of science, such as the Big Bang theory, the structure of DNA and evolution by natural selection, were well established and not going to be changed, except in detail, by new discoveries. Deliciously, just a couple of years later astronomers were surprised to discover that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, that, two-thirds of the Universe is composed of mysterious “dark energy”, that the stuff we are made of (atoms) makes up only 5 per cent of the Universe, and the Big Bang theory is not as complete as we thought. But that has not stopped people repeating essentially the same argument as Horgan in the present century.

For example, in 2009 CHECK, the science journal Nature, hosted a debate on the future of science (http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2009...), where Lewis Wolpert, of University College, argued that fundamental biology is essentially complete and unlikely to spring any major surprises. Although important things remain to be discovered (such as details of the process of the development of an adult organism from a single cell), the “fundamental architecture” is not going to change. I would guess that Gleiser’s counter-argument would involve the puzzle of the interplay between mind and matter discussed towards the end of his book. Until we know what consciousness is, how can we claim to understand biology?

At the same meeting, Alison Wright, editor of the journal Nature Physics, took a marginally less extreme position, admitting that although physics is in a very satisfactory state, it is a subject in which the adage “never say never”applies with full force to the prospects for a revolutionary change. She was no doubt aware of the comment often attributed to William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), who is reported as saying in 1900 that “there is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement”. There is some doubt about the attribution, but no doubt that just after this was allegedly said at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science physics was shaken by not one but two revolutionary developments —quantum physics and relativity theory.

Perhaps with this in mind, and referring to the present Holy Grail quest for a “Theory of Everything”, Gleiser sums up:

“Notions of final theories are incompatible with the scientific method. Given that we can only accrue scientific knowledge from measurements of natural processes, it is by definition impossible to be certain that we know all the forces of Nature or the fundamental particles that exist; at any point in time, new technological tools may reveal the new and unexpected and thus force a revision of our current knowledge.”

There may be such a revision (or revolution) in progress at present. Astronomers of today will tell you, with great confidence, that the Universe as we know it was born 13.82 billion years ago; the natural question to ask then is, “what happened before that?”Until recently, that was regarded as either unanswerable or meaningless. There was no “before”, we were told. Time itself began at the moment the Universe was born. When I was a student I was told that it was meaningless to ask what happened before the time when the entire Universe had the density of an atomic nucleus —the time of the Big Bang. But now cosmologists also talk confidently about the inflation that preceded the Big Bang, earlier than one ten-thousandth of a second after the birth of the Universe from something like a singularity, a point in spacetime. This involves the process known as inflation, which took a a tiny seed —a “quantum fluctuation”and blew it up to become the Big Bang. Inflation theory has recently received a great boost from the apparent discovery of gravitational ripples produced in this process (although I should caution that these results have not yet been independently confirmed). And inflation theory does tell us what happened “before the beginning”.

According to the equations, this inflating spacetime would be just one bubble in an infinitely large and eternal metaverse, with no beginning and no end. Within this metaverse, the story goes, there are regions which form inflating bubbles. Our Universe is such a bubble, and the implication is that there are other universes, other bubbles far away across the inflating sea, like the bubbles that form in the liquid when a bottle of champagne is opened. This seemingly speculative idea counts as a genuine scientific hypothesis, because it makes testable predictions. If other “bubble universes”exist in the metaverse, it is possible that long ago one or more of them may have collided with our Universe, like two soap bubbles touching and moving apart. One effect of such a collision, Gleiser points out, would be to make ripples in the space of both bubble universes that would leave a distinctive, but faint, ring-shaped pattern, known as a “cosmic wake”in the background radiation that fills the Universe. The Planck satellite is testing this prediction right now. Is the metaverse real? “We should know,”says Gleiser, “by mid-2015”.

One way or the other, this will not bring an end to the cosmological quest, which itself is just one aspect of the scientific quest. This is, to my mind, an upbeat conclusion. The quest goes on, always presenting us with new things to wonder about, and to wonder at. Without that sense of wonder, as this excellent book makes clear, there would be no point in doing science at all.





John Gribbin is a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex

and author of In Search of the Multiverse.

[Jafar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gleiser wants to show the inherent limitation of human knowledge due to factors like our being confined to our cosmic horizon, the uncertainty and randomness of quantum mechanics, and the undecidability in mathematics according to Gödel's theorems. As a result, he spends two thirds of the book giving you an overview of cosmology and quantum mechanics. Nothing new that can't be found in any other pop physics books.

Of course there's a limit to what we can observe and measure, as physics itself tells us. However, this doesn't mean that the fundamental laws of the universe are unknowable. This is Gleiser's main claim, and even though I agree with him that it's naive and arrogant of us to think that we can understand the nature of reality and the laws governing it, he doesn't offer anything as a proof. He presents an interesting analogy of knowledge being an island in the ocean of unknowns. The bigger the island gets, the more it comes in contact with the surrounding ocean. Nice analogy, but not more than that.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although not enthralled with Gleiser as a writer, I did enjoy thinking about some of the questions he raised in regard to the limits of what we can know about the universe and about ourselves. His book inspired me to reread Max Weber's excellent essay, "Wissenschaft als Beruf" ("Science as Profession"), a lecture given in Munich in 1918 and published in the following year in which Weber considers the role of science in the modern world. Including relevant excerpts from Weber's essay would have been a nice addition to Gleiser's book. Weber makes an excellent point about the disparity in modern civilized societies between what scientists know and what lay people know about the way the world works and contrasts this with the more holistic knowledge of those living in traditional ("primitive") societies:

Machen wir uns zunächst klar, was denn eigentlich diese intellektualistische Rationalisierung durch Wissenschaft und wissenschaftlich orientierte Technik praktisch bedeutet. Etwa, daß wir heute, jeder z. B., der hier im Saale sitzt, eine größere Kenntnis der Lebensbedingungen hat, unter denen er existiert, als ein Indianer oder ein Hottentotte? Schwerlich. Wer von uns auf der Straßenbahn fährt, hat – wenn er nicht Fachphysiker ist – keine Ahnung, wie sie das macht, sich in Bewegung zu setzen. Er braucht auch nichts davon zu wissen. Es genügt ihm, daß er auf das Verhalten des Straßenbahnwagens „rechnen“ kann, er orientiert sein Verhalten daran; aber wie man eine Trambahn so herstellt, daß sie sich bewegt, davon weiß er nichts. Der Wilde weiß das von seinen Werkzeugen ungleich besser. Wenn wir heute Geld ausgeben, so wette ich, dass, sogar wenn nationalökonomische Fachkollegen im Saale [16] sind, fast jeder eine andere Antwort bereit halten wird auf die Frage: Wie macht das Geld es, daß man dafür etwas – bald viel, bald wenig – kaufen kann? Wie der Wilde es macht, um zu seiner täglichen Nahrung zu kommen, und welche Institutionen ihm dabei dienen, das weiß er. Die zunehmende Intellektualisierung und Rationalisierung bedeutet also nicht eine zunehmende allgemeine Kenntnis der Lebensbedingungen, unter denen man steht. Sondern sie bedeutet etwas anderes: das Wissen davon oder den Glauben daran: daß man, wenn man nur wollte, es jederzeit erfahren könnte, daß es also prinzipiell keine geheimnisvollen unberechenbare Mächte gebe, die da hineinspielen, daß man vielmehr alle Dinge – im Prinzip – durch Berechnen beherrschen könne. Das aber bedeutet: die Entzauberung der Welt. Nicht mehr, wie der Wilde, für den es solche Mächte gab, muß man zu magischen Mitteln greifen, um die Geister zu beherrschen oder zu erbitten. Sondern technische Mittel und Berechnung leisten das. Dies vor allem bedeutet die Intellektualisierung als solche.

For Weber, the disenchantment (Entzauberung) and intellectualization of the world consists not in everyone knowing how things work but rather in the belief that there are rational answers and that through study anyone can have access thereto. Gleiser suggests the possibility (even the probability) that this is not the case. There may be limits to our ability to know (both technical and biological). He does, however, agree with Weber that the provision of meaning is not the purpose of science. For that we must look within ourselves.

[Melora]

Okay, not giving this an “official” star rating, as it seems unfair to drag the book down when others, undoubtedly cleverer or with stronger scientific backgrounds or both, enjoyed it very much. Still, for my own reference I'll note that I'd rate this with three stars. There were long two star sections where I was lost or bored. Much here seems to me to be so spectacularly speculative that it barely merits the label “science,” and other sections (or, sometimes, the same sections) seemed somewhat repetitive, though that might just reflect my failure to grasp the nuances in what Gleiser was explaining. There were some bits that were quite interesting, though. Four star sections. So, my unofficial rating averages to three stars.

I'm not sure how much of my issue here is attributable to having listened to this as an Audible recording rather than reading a physical copy. In hindsight that was a really dumb choice. I somehow expected this to be more philosophical and less... physics. It's got a Lot of physics. Philosophy too, and Gleiser does do a lovely job of exploring what various scientific concepts (as I said, largely physics-related) might mean to us in a “what can we know about our place in the cosmos” sense. Still, I'd have done better to tackle this as a physical book, where I could read slowly and reread the trickier bits. Actually, I have it as a physical book as well, but it's been sitting in my TBR stack for over a year, looking intriguing but also more than a little intimidating. That's my problem with this sort of book – the speculative, far-out sort of physics that seems as much fantasy as science. Every so often I'll watch a science documentary show, hosted by someone brilliant, but with a knack for presenting difficult concepts to the average viewer, like Carl Sagan or Brian Greene, and I find the notions of things like strings and multiple universes to be fascinating. While the charming host is explaining the things, it almost feels like I can grasp them, but later, when I try to articulate what I found so neat it turns out that I really didn't. So I buy the book. And inevitably find that what seemed interesting on television, when offered up with clever graphics and special effects, is really pretty complicated and I get muddled and put the book aside. Which is why I tried this as an audio, but, as it turns out, that doesn't work for me either.

Anyway, despite all the bits where I was lost, there is a reasonable amount here that is engaging. Gleiser offers a nice overview of the history of physics, with an eye especially to how the “limits” of science have changed over time, depending of the accuracy of our tools, on what we can measure, and on what we can conceive of measuring. He points to the ways that recognizing limits is valuable, in terms of appreciating what we don't know and also of surmounting those limits.

”The knowledge that we have defines the knowledge that we can have. Still, this is just what a physicist might call the initial condition: a few steps from the beginning, the game is open-ended and unpredictable. As knowledge shifts, we ask new kinds of questions that couldn't have been anticipated.”

This is a thought-provoking exploration of where physics has been and of what things look like today at its cutting edge (and sometimes a bit over that edge, it seemed to me). Lots of interesting material, particularly for readers comfortable with ideas like quantum nonlocality, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, entangled pairs, and so on. For less scientifically minded readers I would suggest that this is best enjoyed slowly, in physical book format, and at a point in the day when your brain is firing on all cylinders, rather than as an audio book after the evening's first cocktail and while walking a rambunctious young golden retriever.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author has done it again. I read books in order to find out about our universe and our place in it, and this book does better than any other book since his last book "A Tear at the Edge of Creation". I have no idea why his books do not become instant classics and aren't more widely read. He really relates well to my way of thinking and leaves no stone untold while telling his story. And what a story he tells with this book!

Yes, we are in Plato's Cave, but we do manage to get out from time to time. It is our ignorance that leads us to knowledge. It is the things we don't know that leads to our further understanding. Our very foundations of reality are based on the constructs that we use to explain the patterns we see in data. Particles are made of matter (electrons, quarks,..) and forces. Fields describes these forces and matter and their interactions. The definition of the field is not precise but we continue to use it in our explanations.

The author covers all of the physics that's exciting to me. The Greeks lay the foundations by using intuition and argumentation but never quite adding the empirical. It becomes the void verse matter, the being verse becoming which leads to matter verse energy. Before Einstein, matter needed matter to travel through giving us the aether. The aether makes sense until it's not needed. The Morley Michelson experiments were at first explained by the natural compression of space as objects flow through the aether. The narrative's we use change as our understanding improve and our scientific definitions expand.

There is large problem with the understanding of physics. The measurement problem, the dual nature of light (wave and particle), double slit experiments, that darn dead and alive cat, and how does "spooky action at a distance" (now known as real and called Entanglement) fit into our narratives. Einstein thought reality had to be understandable and that nature at the most fundamental level had to make sense and it must be our operational levels that were failing us. David Bohm and Einstein thought there must be hidden variables to explain the cosmic complexity at the quantum level. At the local level,they have been shown to be wrong.

This book covers all of the controversies associated with the Copenhagen Interruption, and how the act of measuring does change the system being measured. At the heart of understanding nature with the current narratives we have in place there are mysteries that can't be resolved. The more we find out we don't know, the better stories we can end up telling.

Our nexus of knowledge doesn't lie outside of us, it lies within us. We our the ones who determine how we understand and when a light flickers in our cave we find another way to describe what we see.

He's got a nice section on mathematics, Godol's theorem and Turing's universal machine and the Halting Problem. Plato with his cave says math is always discovered not invented. The author will explain why it's best to think of it as being invented not discovered. The incompleteness, lack of coherence as proof for a system, and the problem of the self realization for a finite solution ('Halting Problem') leads to a better understanding of math. By the way, the author does point out for my hero, Mr. Spock, with his logical consistency and understanding will really never be attainable.

This is a book that just keeps on giving. He'll tell the reader about Higgs Bosons, Dark Matter, Dark Energy , expanding universes, what advanced AI can mean for us and a host of other just as interesting things.

Needless to say, I would strongly recommend this book and his other book available on Audible ("A Tear at the Edge of Creation"). Regretfully, this author's books seem to be ignored by the public at large, but if I can convince just one more person to read this book, I would have made the world just a little bit better!

[Nikhil Krishnan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm inspired to begin this review by citing Plato's Allegory of the Cave as well.

I believe that most readers who are not familiar with more than basic physics would see the same shadows upon the wall as the author presents his expertise in the field by stating a couple principles and theories and the person who proposed them in his textbook like fashion and sticking the title of the book towards the end in the brittle candlelight.

This is not how the entire book is, though. When talking about fields like philosophy, astronomy, AI, and mathematics, the author is quite down to earth and doesn't cause the reader to swipe a few pages forward to escape the tedium. Many chapters are quite engaging, and if one were to carefully dissect the good veggies from the spoilt ones, I'd be inclined to rate it higher. But I think that the reader should be spared the effort, at least for the most part.

I enjoyed the analogies and the attempts to make physics fun here and there, but it's still mostly a slog that no reader should have to endure.

[Filipe França · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quanto podemos conhecer do mundo? Será que podemos conhecer tudo? Ou será que existem limites fundamentais para o que a ciência pode explicar?

Com o objetivo destacado em suas primeiras frases, somos levados em uma jornada pela história da ciência, começando na Grécia Antiga e evoluindo, com o passar dos séculos e dos capítulos, em nosso entendimento sobre o universo e a realidade.

Na primeira parte - das três nas quais o livro é dividido, e para mim a melhor - o autor usa a área da cosmologia para nos mostrar como a nossa percepção do que é realidade está em constante transformação e depende de nossos meios para observar o mundo. Viajando na história da busca da humanidade em compreender a natureza do espaço, do tempo e de nosso lugar no universo, o autor nos mostra os limites de nosso entendimento sobre o mundo e, principalmente, o que pode ser entendido sobre a realidade. Nos é apresentada a existência do incognoscível, definido no livro como sendo aquilo que está além da nossa capacidade de entendimento, o que vejo sendo um conceito extremamente dificil de ser assimilado; existe algo lá fora que não conseguiremos desvendar e entender? Essa forma de enxergar o papel e objetivo da ciência foi nova para mim, e a pequena mudança na construção da frase "descrever a realidade" para "descrever a realidade como a percebemos" tem um impacto filosófico e estrutural na forma como enxergamos nosso papel no mundo que não é facilmente processado. Nessa questão o livro se mostra provocativo e instigante, e serve para expandir nossos horizontes, ou melhor, expandir nossa fronteira pessoal na ilha do conhecimento.

Além do objetivo de discutir como o entendimento de mundo da humanidade, utilizando da ciência como meio para tal, é limitada, temos também um livro que representa a defesa do autor a sua visão sobre aspectos do que constitui nosso conhecimento, a ciência e a realidade. Essa é outra camada importante e surpreendente sobre o livro, já que a visão do autor dessas questões geram discussões relevantes e boas reflexões que instigam o leitor a conclusões muitas vezes não trivial de ser alcançada a respeito de questões populares na cultura pop científica. Porém, as perguntas que supostamente movem o livro são muitas vezes esquecidas por capítulos a fim.

Quando aborda assuntos mais próximos a metafísica, ou no geral onde uma opinião é requerida, as discussões são apresentadas de forma desestruturada e contra-argumentagiva. Melhor, o autor demonstra sim uma estrutura de apresentação sua visão sobre diversos aspectos: há sempre uma listagem de argumentos sobre um determinado assunto, os quais o autor, logo em seguida, alega equivocados (e aqui ele utiliza de maneiras diversas para declarar esses pontos não válidos) e, pelos próximos parágrafos discute argumentos que defendem sua visão. Parece uma estrutura ótima! O problema disso é que os argumentos oferecidos pelo autor, algumas vezes, não retratam o assunto que se está sendo discutido em sua totalidade - são argumentos que não falam exatamente do problema em questão, mas são utilizados por reforçar a visão do autor. Isso fica gritante no capítulo 29, onde a discussão de se a matemática foi descoberta ou inventada é abordada. Apesar das opiniões apresentadas, nesse capítulo e em todo livro, serem muito bem embasadas - e em muitos casos eu, particularmente, concorde com o ponto defendido pelo autor - a forma como é feita a argumentação é enganadora, sendo dados argumentos que não conversam inteiramente com a discussão inicial.

Usada como plano de fundo para movimentar as discussões propostas, a história da ciência retratada em resumo ao longo do livro foi um dos pontos de maior brilho da obra. O autor soube como utilizar dessa narrativa para propor suas discussões, mantendo o leitor instigado, tanto com a história que está nos apresentando quanto com a discussão proposta.

A grandiosa narrativa da ciência deve ser celebrada como um dos grandes feitos do intelecto humano, um testemunho da nossa habilidade coletiva de criar conhecimento,. E é, de fato, celebrada nessa livro, de forma madura e honesta, apresentando as limitações inerentes ao método cientifico, chamando atenção ao seu verdadeiro propósito e sem ser tímido na auto-crítica, nos é mostrado o que há de melhor na ciência, por ser provocativo, por nos deixar curioso em saber mais e por ser real a sua essência.

[Todd Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellently written book that starts the reader off with a bit of a brain teaser. The paradox of knowledge: the more we know the less we know. (Marcelo Gleiser is much more eloquent and inspiring that I in supporting this paradoxical yet empirically valid assertion, mind you!) In it he interlaces the philosophical, physical and human limitations relating to truth and knowledge.
Knowledge is presented as an island that is ever increasing its boundaries, however unrhythmically in fits and starts and regressions. Regardless the shape of the ever increasing perimeter that is the island’s shores, that which is beyond, the unknown, increases in lock step; ergo, the more knowledge we gain the more knowledge there is to be had. Put another way, as the reference section in our cummulateive library of knowledge grows so does the free space that will be required to contain what we don’t yet know but presumably will discover and add---or not be able to discover and add.
Revisited is the powerful vision expressed by Plato who likened the human ability to understand to that of a fictional people whose reality is constrained to seeing shadows cast onto a wall from a fire behind them. The source of the shadows totally invisible and inaccessible to them, as they are constrained by nature and thus able to see only the two-dimensional shadows in front of them as they flicker and dance. Their truths are built upon the clever narratives stitched together by themselves or others more capable of divining causal connections between the shadows and their everyday experiences. In this world many find comfort in the predictability of the repetitive, others remain skeptical.
Weaving together the personalities of scientist to whom we owe a great deal and the truths about the reality they discovered, Gleiser reveals the limits that are imposed by the discovered rules of the universe by providing explanations of the developments in cosmology, relativity and quantum mechanics, and how our understanding of these very solid yet never immutable theories---and the vast empirical evidence that supports them---guarantees that the shores of knowledge in certain areas are dammed. Never the pessimist or defeatist, the author expresses humility at the incalculable vastness that is still awaiting discovery and refinement.
This is the first book I’ve read by Marcelo Gleiser. I must say that his ability to communicate complex ideas is unsurpassed. My reference set of Sagan, Dawkins, Pinker, Kahneman and other notables is limited of course. That said, I very much look forward to reading more of his works.

[Oliver Grin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is difficult to say with certainty whether or not I can completely recommend this book, for a few specific and semi-circumstantial reasons. First I would like to say that I believe this is a book that is best read in its printed form; I read it as an audio book and found it generally difficult to follow. Another major factor in my difficulty was the fact that I am a person with virtually no background in physics or higher-level mathematics, and much of the book focused on specific theories, scientists, and scientific history. If I had read it on pages rather than through my headphones, perhaps I'd have been able to glean more from it than I did. As it stands, I feel that I did not learn much.

From a purely literary stand-point, I can say this: The book begins with an interesting premise (essentially that science is not such a fixed and boundless field that it can or should be treated as absolute truth or more 'correct' than other forms of belief; that spirituality, culture, and scientific research can all benefit one another), but is not executed particularly well. The author's narrative voice is charming enough, with wit and humility, the sort of person I felt I might like to have a coffee with, but he fails to bring together what he feels to be relative points to cohere into his thesis. Thus, much of the book wanders through different theories, intermittently veering off into tangential anecdotes about various scientists of the past, without ever feeling as though it comes to a clear head.

Again, perhaps if the circumstances had been somewhat different and I had more familiarity with physics or math, or if I had read the book in print, I might have a different opinion of the book. As such, I found it a bit of a slog, all the while wishing I could enjoy it more.

[Chimezie Ogbuji · Rating 5 out of 5]

This started off with some presumptions that annoyed me but ended up being one of the best philosophical analysis of science that I have read.

The annoyance began with the author making the typical mistake westerners make of beginning their history of rational philosophy with the greeks.

Then the author proceeds to make a slow winding path to the heart of an argument that strongly resonates with me: that science is limited and the hubris of thinking that there is an endpoint to science - a point we can get to where we have an understanding of everything - is ill-fated.

But this is my subjective reason for liking this book.

Objectively, the strength of this book is the breadth of his analysis of science, the major breakthroughs, and fundamental limitations that are well known but often ignored by proponents of theories that are not experimentally verifiable such as string and multiverse theories. His writing is strong and the strength of the book, in my opinion, is that he doesn't fall into the trap (at least not excessively) of using too much jargon and making the very interesting topics inaccessible.

If you enjoy philosophical and historical analysis of the study of science, you will enjoy this book and will probably want a copy of it on your bookshelf

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

My main takeaway from this book? We don't know everything, and that's ok. We don't need explanations for everything. We can work towards a better understanding of our natural world and universe, but we don't have to make up an answer or pretend we have one when we don't know. We can just be ok with where we're at.

This isn't to say we can't hypothesize; in fact, we should. It's natural. But let's be careful about how much stock we put in unsubstantiated hypotheses. If we have what we think is a good idea, then by all means, let's test it. But let's be careful about what counts as evidence and what doesn't.

[Mishehu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply: superb. Gleiser is one of the best (lucid, thought-provoking) popular science writers today. I can't fathom why any other reviewers awarded fewer than five stars. The Island of Knowledge is as close to perfect a read as can be -- provided you're interested in the questions it poses and the positions it adopts. This is my second Gleiser read. I'll definitely be back for more.

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I am reading a truly great book when I finish a chapter and am compelled to go back to the beginning of the chapter and read every word again, not because it was too complex or the author lost me, but rather because the information was so necessary, so compact, and so important that it deserved another pass. I reread almost every chapter of this book, at least once. I cannot understand any review that doesn't give this book 5 full stars. It was amazing. So many books provide a history of how we came to know what we know about the universe. The history in this book was rich, unique, extremely important, and simply exquisitely written. I have not enjoyed a history this much since reading Swerve. There were times I wanted Greenblatt to go into more detail (or be more clear) about the ideas and lives of Epicurus and Lucretius. What Greenblatt left out, Gleiser provided, and it was amazing.

Gleiser artfully took the reader through one of the best histories ever written in order to help the reader understand our most current picture of the strange and complex universe (multiverse). He built a bridge between the past and present that was incredible for the reader to traverse. It is a rare skill indeed to be able to choose not only the wide scope of space, the universe and multiverse itself, but to put into the contexts of both ancient and modern time.

As a byproduct of, what I perceived to be the author's main goal, he was able to successfully do for the 2010s what
Tomas Kuhn did for the 1960s, when he helped the public understand how scientific ideas undergo paradigm shifts.

I read this book at the same time I read Mathematical Universe by Tegmark. Reading both together was an amazing experience. I have read so many physics books lately. Many of them deserve 5 stars because the information contained within them is worth the 5 stars. However, when I am lucky enough to read a book that is extremely relatable, entertaining, informative, and addictive (one that makes you almost want to cry when it ends because you feel a loss), I often wish there was an extra half star that I could give it. This is that kind of book. I loved it!

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of this book would have been more enjoyable had I not already read several books outlining the advances of science from the Greeks, through the European enlightenment and onward. What this particular author brings to the table, and the primary point of the book, is this: with all the advancements of science, there is simply too much that we will probably never be able to know because of our lack of ability to see. We cannot see into the past. We cannot really see into the immensity of space (only into it's past, not at all into it's present). We cannot see the sub-atomic world, only conjecture from it's behavior. The author is clearly an atheist and is by no means slamming science for any theological edge. He is a scientist who is pointing out that with all our necessary and worthwhile explorations into discovering the nature of our world/universe, we are stuck on an ever-growing island of knowledge, but we will never be able to know it all, or even be able to answer most of our questions.

[Joseph Schrock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review of Marcelo Gleiser’s book will contain some praise, but also some significant criticisms. The book is engagingly and elegantly written – sometimes even poetic. In his prologue, Gleiser writes (pages xxii-xxiii):

“But just for starters, once we explore the nature of human knowledge --- that is, how we try to make sense of the world and of our place in it --- it should be obvious that our approach is fundamentally limited in scope. This realization should OPEN doors, not close them, since it makes the search for knowledge an open-ended pursuit, an endless romance with the unknown. And what could be more inspiring than knowing that there will always be something new to discover in the natural world, that no matter how much we know there will always be plenty of room for the unexpected….”

To my thinking, this very fact should shut tightly the door to atheism, because the unknown – and, I’m convinced, sometimes the unknowable – looms ever before us. Far too limited is the human vista for us to be ever justified in concluding that we can summarily rule out a loving and just Creator whose very existence can potentially be known by us. Fortunately, so far as I am aware, Gleiser never seeks to block out of his epistemology the possibility for a Divine Presence – even if his skepticism might seek to cast aspersions on that possibility.

Further along in the book (on page 11), Gleiser recounts the event of telling his young son his views on what happens after we die. He states this:

“It breaks my heart to have to tell him that what happens to us is the same thing that happens to the ant he crushes under his feet. He, of course, is not convinced. ‘How do you know, Dad?’ ‘I don’t know for sure, son. Some people believe we do come back; others that we go to a place called Paradise, where we meet everybody else who has died. The problem is that I haven’t heard back from any of them to be sure that that’s where we are headed.’”

Without establishing trust with a “Higher Reality”, hope for the future can be painfully dim. In a somewhat relevant vein, Gleiser says the following (page 65):

“Plato dreamt of a cave with an exit to the light of perfect knowledge, but it seems wise to accept that no knowledge can be perfect or final.”

I do not agree that it is wise to accept that assessment, even if, for now, a person is left feeling compelled to remain embroiled in doubt. For the most fortunate among us, even such doubt can be essentially extinguished.
Regarding the limits on what we can truly know about the universe, Gleiser presents the following view (page 92):

“The lesson here is distressing: not only are there causal and technological limits to how much we can know of the cosmos, but what information we do manage to gather may be tricking us into constructing an entirely false worldview. What we measure doesn’t tell us the whole story; in fact, it may be telling us an irrelevantly small part of it.”

Again on page 100, Gleisers emphasizes the point of how much uncertainty there is about our knowledge of the cosmos:

“How can we then be so sure that we are that much better off, that we are not missing a big chunk of the cosmic picture? Science is efficient at discovering what exists, if within reach, but it cannot rule out with any final authority what doesn’t exist.”

I believe that this is a critically important point. To my way of thinking, the sometimes touted “Theory of Everything” is little better than a joke. Human science will never do much more than scratch the surface of Ultimate Reality. Gleiser seems to concur with that assessment.

Gleiser comments on whether we might live in a multiverse. On page 112 he says this:

“Our Big Bang would be a local occurrence in a vast collection of cosmic histories.

“Can such an idea, crazy as it sounds, be actually physics and not mere speculation? Any scientific hypothesis must be testable. Experiments or otherwise observational data must be collected to consider its scientific viability. Given that we have no evidence that we live in a multiverse – any direct evidence may well be impossible to gather – we must consider the idea with great care, checking wheat evidence we do have in hand, and add to it what we may collect in the future, if anything….
“Taken together, the arguments above suggest that the multiverse is at least theoretically possible” (page 123). He continues with this discussion on page 129:

“However, I stress again that even a positive detection of a neighboring universe would not prove the existence of a multiverse. Within the present formulation of physics the multiverse hypothesis is untestable, however compelling it may be.”

Regarding some implications of quantum physics, Gleiser observes as follows:

“Physics was thus proposing that something could exist without mass, that things could exist without being material. Since what exists defines physical reality, the new physics suggested that reality could be immaterial.”

Indeed! Reality may be much more interesting than almost anyone had surmised. If “Spirit” undergirds all reality, then when science gets close enough to the ultimate nature of reality, mysteries might proliferate with a vengeance. Gleiser declares that quantum indeterminacy is intrinsic to mass-energy – not merely the result of our limits on the precision of measurement. On page 174, Gleiser says this:

“Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Heisenberg’s principle is that uncertainty inherent in quantum physics is not a technological problem resulting from instruments with limited precision; quantum uncertainty is fundamentally an expression of how Nature behaves at the shortest distances, an expression of a world alien to our own. We can’t make it go away with better technology.”

Gleiser creates an imaginary conversation with a scientific realist. On page 181, he expresses these thoughts:

“’Well, perhaps the lesson from quantum mechanics is simply that we can’t understand the nature of reality, that we must learn to live with this realization and accept that we can only have partial knowledge of what reality is. We must learn to let go.’”

Here’s more about quantum mysteries (page 214):

“Taken together, the experiments rule out local theories of quantum mechanics using hidden variables to explain instantaneous action-at-a-distance. Nonlocality (also sometimes called ‘separability’) – influences acting superluminally between members of spatially separated entangled pairs – is a ghost that seems to be real. Reality is not just stranger than we suppose. It’s far stranger that we CAN suppose.”

Gleiser emphasizes that quantum mechanics has proven to present us with unsolvable mysteries. On page 231 he writes:
“Quantum mechanics forces us to confront the unknowable head-on. This is why it makes most physicists uncomfortable. ‘Unknowable’ is anathema to the core goal of the scientific program, which is designed to deal with, and ultimately make sense of, unknowns. Einstein, Schrodinger, and the scientific realists shun the possibility that Nature would keep secrets beyond our grasp.”

On pages 234-5 he continues: “There are aspects of reality that are permanently beyond our reach. The Island of Knowledge must exist as an island, surrounded not only be what we don’t know but by the unknowable nature of the quantum realm.”

And of very great interest to me, Gleiser observes the following:

“Inevitably, we will have to confront the role of quantum effects in the brain and its possible relevance to consciousness, beyond what Wigner proposed.”

I am quite nearly convinced that quantum physics is closely tied to the fantastically mysterious functions of the brain, the mind, consciousness, freedom of the will, and the fact that the human brain is the most obvious interface between mind and matter that we can ever discover.

With regard to whether computers can ever think, Gleiser says this (page 261):

“The practical feasibility of thinking machines, then, depends on how the brain functions and the nature of the mind.”

That is entirely correct, and according to my view of reality, computers can never be brought into a status whereby they think, feel, or have even a spark of consciousness. Thus, strong AI (artificial intelligence) is ruled out. On page 265, Gleiser comments on the dualism of mind/body:

“If the soul is not material, how can it interact with the material? Indeed, if it does interact, it must exchange energy with matter. Such an energy exchange process would make the soul or parts of it material, forcing it t have a detectable signature.”

In the margin of my book, next to that paragraph, I wrote this: “Read Whitehead and David Ray Griffin!” In other words, I believe that Alfred North Whitehead generated a philosophy of ontology that renders the viability of the objective existence of mind and its interactions with the body plausible. His book, “Process and Reality”, is profoundly difficult to read, but a “disciple” of Whitehead (David Ray Griffin) is a highly prolific expositor of Whitehead’s profound philosophical system.

Gleiser’s book is an excellent production. It contains much expert physics, and it is quite effective at driving home the point that the human acquisition of knowledge will forever be constrained by what is unknown and even what is unknowable. This is, by my reckoning, the best physics/philosophy book I’ve yet read. Some discussions are deep and technical, but overall the book is quite palatable to a fairly educated layman.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine the knowledge we've accumulated about the world and ourselves as an island in an ocean of the unknown. As we learn, the island grows; but so does the shoreline - our ignorance as a boundary between the known and unknown.

Gleiser uses this analogy to illustrate the growth of human knowledge over time, describing scientific discoveries that have added to and refined our little island of knowledge.

He tackles some pretty complex topics covering cosmology, quantum physics, and consciousness, and explains them in a very accessible way. After reading this, I definitely feel smarter. And also more ignorant.

[Tracyene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm about to reread this book, something I rarely do--there are too many new books I want to read. But the opportunity to read this again with Peter, an actual scientist!, is too tempting. There was too much I didn't understand, so it will be nice to have an "expert" to discuss the contents with.

[Jim Gleason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another mind-stretching read that often goes above my level of understanding, but I did stay with it (as I always do, even as I find myself asking a self-searching question of whether this is the best spending of my time when other options are available) feeling that I owe it to the author out of respect for their dedication of sharing knowledge.
The topics of each chapter are most intriguing relative to such things as 'what is real'? While that may seem too simplistic, once you have read the author's history and collection of research on that topic, you may not be so sure of what you thought you knew beyond a doubt. The same is true of so many topics he shares, often with numbers that go beyond our human experience or imagination. Another example is the question of whether humans could ever create a computer with the power and ability to simulate the human mind. Speaking of simulations, his sharings about whether we are living in a simulation itself again goes beyond my layman's ability to understand.

So with that confession, you may be asking, "So Jim, why do you buy and read books like this that seem to be beyond your understanding?" Not sure if I have a good answer to that very good question, but I do find myself understanding a little more of those challenging topics as I dig into yet another challenging read like this one, but don't think I will live long enough to build that growing understanding to a reasonable level, certainly not to ever achieving a science researcher level. What I do come away with is the respect that there are humans who do research these topics and often with an understanding that blows my own mind in reading about them. Even more interesting is the story that often plays out with equally supportable opposing views, along with many questions that are still not understood but the questions being raised (as noted in my 'reality' example above) are achievements of the human mind that is equally impressive.

So, in closing, who would I recommend this impressive book as a read? If you want to see what the most intelligent researchers are trying to understand and what mysteries of the cosmos are being debated at the highest levels, this is a read for you. Just don't give up when you find the topics, while very intriguing as a topic, become far above your level of layman's understanding. I intersperse these highly challenging science reads with other self-help and fictional novels, or as you may have seen in my other reads, organ transplant books with very understandable human challenges and inspiring life stories.

[Sabin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't shake the feeling that I've read this book before. Most probably, this is because I've heard almost all of the arguments in this book from different sources at different times. But this book is not about making any new philosophical point.

It's a well documented and rigorously constructed survey of the science which probes the limits of human understanding. It's aim is to describe what the actual and virtual limits of our knowledge are, what our current understanding of the world around us is, what we can hope to understand in the future based on what we know now and what is effectively beyond those limits, meaning that we can't prove or disprove statements about them.

Gleiser starts by tracing the changes in size of what he calls our island of knowledge throughout history, then goes on to explain our current understanding of reality through relativity theory and quantum mechanics and some of their predictions and interpretations, with a small detour through string theory and other theories which are yet to have been experimentally proven. For these ones, he insists on what such a proof might require and if it is, in fact, logically possible to construct an experiment to test these theories.

The last part switches the focus from the world around us to consciousness and how deeply we can probe the inner workings of our minds. It is here that he also tests the simulation hypothesis, unprovable by its very nature, but logically consistent.

This book is as much an exploration of the boundaries of scientific understanding as it is a personal confession of faith in the scientific method and its results. It is clear, with very good explanations and notes with references for further study, and while the little stories were at most tolerable, my overall impression was good.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains a good summary of the history of scientific understanding of the world. Then he makes a compelling argument for why there will always be unknowns, we will never understand everything by scientific inquiry. There are things that we can never know, and he is not talking about metaphysical or theological ideas, but things that definitely fall within the purview of science. The author gives this, not as a defeatist attitude, but to tell that there will always be a shoreline to the "Island of Knowledge" There will always be something to investigate.

I could not help but apply the thesis of this book to my world view as a believing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I have long been surprised at the large numbers of scientifically minded people who hold the very unscientific view that science proves that there is no God and that religious people are simply deluded. I think this view is folly. The connection with my view and the book's thesis is that there are some questions that cannot be answered with the scientific method, and to think that because a question is not provable by this method indicates that the premise is false is not good science, nor is it good logic.

[Thiago Spirandelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gleiser brings originality and a fresh perspective to a well-worn theme: science and its potential. Philosophy is the embryo of science, and Gleiser manages to spark these reflections while weaving in updates on the new frontiers of scientific discovery

At some point, the book stalls in the same place, with little progress and too much redundancy. The storytelling isn’t very clear, and it feels padded with overly complex subjects and unnecessary details woven into the middle of it.

Overall, though, the book stands out as unique, and the author succeeds in bringing studies that usually exist only in the niche academic world to us, mere mortals

[Asad Ahmed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marcelo defined the scientific concepts in detail and made a path for reader to push the island of knowledge in any direction. why the sky looks blue, he defined Rayleigh scattering in an efficient manner. it's a worth reading pice of science.

[Ryan McGranaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this are incomparably fascinating, including the history of science, connection of quantum mechanics to the prevalence of uncertainty in our world, and the framing of knowledge as an island and surrounding sea. Other parts are scientifically appealing, but perhaps necessarily slower/require more energy.

In it's entirety, though, it is expanding. An important read for today's society that is navigating the intersection of science and society and grappling with questions of what it means to 'know.'

[Nilesh Jasani · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book's biggest problem is that its purpose and its content have nothing in common.

The author has a clear goal: to describe why the knowledge we will have at any point will never be complete. In a way, the author wants to imply that knowledge will always be like an island on the surface of reality's ocean - it can only see/represent/understand a small part of what is out there. There will always be unanswered questions for science no matter how much we progress.

Despite many different attempts, the author's supposed revelation/discovery escapes any masterful proof and turns out to be a mere assertion. There is nothing wrong with it except that for many, this assertion is too trivial and obvious to warrant a conversation as there are almost no individuals from any walk of life who believes in the opposite. For those who find something new in this argument, the struggle while reading the book is to find the connection between most of the content of the book and the purpose.

Between the opening and the close where the arguments are centred around the key belief, the author simply discusses whichever topics he is comfortable with. One is not to ask why the coverage is limited to physical sciences (while skipping, for instance, computational or biological sciences) with occasional brushes with early Greek philosophy (religions have no place in the discourse as do economics, sociology, eastern philosophies or even post renaissance western philosophies). The author finds time to reflect on aspects of industrial revolution even though the post-1950 electronic/computing revolution seems to have no relevance. Whatever scientific discoveries/theories are touched upon, the selection appears more based on the availability of popular literature material on them (hence the focus on Newtonian and 1900-1950 eras) than anything else.

The book's summaries of key relativity and quantum mechanic topics are too short to help the uninitiated or benefit those already somewhat familiar.

[Welton Rodrigo Nascimento · Rating 4 out of 5]

Acho que estou ficando velho demais para livros de ciência recheados de poesia, mas eu gosto do estilo do Marcelo Gleiser. O fato dele ser um cientista respeitado também ajuda, já que ler livros de divulgação científica é, acima de tudo, um exercício de confiança (fé?).

O livro vai do muito grande ao muito pequeno, do primeiro instante no tempo às cogitações mais futuristas, no meio disso, tenta mostrar que nem num lado nem no outro o ser humano será capaz de chegar à realidade última do universo (ele até duvida que haja tal realidade, achando que sua busca é inútil).

Porém, acho que se perdeu no meio do caminho, parece que ia mostrar que, onde quer que estivéssemos hoje tentando chegar ao cerne da realidade, o véu não cederia. Mas, no finalzinho, acho que desistiu disso e, no final das contas, o livro acabou sendo sobre a Ilha do Conhecimento (aquilo que sabemos do mundo, em contraponto ao oceano do desconhecido).

No último livro que li, o Criação Imperfeita: Cosmo, Vida e o Código Oculto da Natureza, ficou a impressão de que ele era o mais lúcido dos realistas, alguém que havia desistido da busca pela beleza e simetria na natureza (e errou apostando contra o Bóson de Higgs), alguém pra quem a busca pela verdade não é uma religião. Daí eu esperar que ele fosse dar veredicto final: nunca chegaremos a saber a origem do universo ou porque estamos aqui.

De qualquer forma, este é muito interessante e vale a pena pra quem gosta de filosofar sobre ciência e sobre os limites do conhecimento. É uma ótima introdução ao multiverso e teoria das cordas.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although many of the concepts explored in this book are at the very edge of my comprehension, I still feel a need to confront these questions about the nature of reality.
That need to increase our knowledge is at the heart of this book. From classical cosmology to the weirdness of the quantum realm. From mathematical conception to the nature of consciousness.
Marcelo Gleiser taps into one of the essential traits that make us human; namely to continue to push at the barriers of the known, to expand the "Island Of Knowledge" with the tools at our disposal, full well knowing there are no ultimate answers. Brilliantly written!

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. He covers the history of astronomy, physics, and math and shows how our knowledge expands but also the awareness of our ignorance expands, and in fact it looks like there are many questions that may never be scientifically explored because they may be outside the boundaries of what we can ever observe. There were a few chapters about quantum physics that I didn't really "get" but then I have never been able to grasp the quantum world although I've read many explanations targeted at lay people. Other than those chapters I felt like everything made sense to me. Very beautiful and inspiring writing from a scientific but not scientistic viewpoint.

[Hom Sack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially liked and enjoyed his account of the history of science in the first part of the book and his philosophy towards the end. However, I found the account of quantum physics and cosmology in the middle rather boring. This is not because of the way he wrote about it. It is just that I never believed in them. Perhaps the horizon on the island of knowledge where I live is short. Nevertheless, the book was a worthwhile read.

[Jonathan Fenile de Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has a very accessible language and explains nicely the evolution of science (mostly physics) until nowadays. He uses this historical background along with some philosophical thinking to get to his thesis that there are things that are not passive to be known.
Sometimes I thought it to be a little pretensions, but overall it's fine and presents the reader to a very interesting and important discussion.