Existential Physics

A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions

By: Sabine Hossenfelder

Narrated by: Gina Daniels

Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

A contrarian scientist wrestles with the big questions that modern physics raises, and what physics says about the human condition.

Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation. On the other hand, the idea that the universe itself is conscious is difficult to rule out entirely.

According to Sabine Hossenfelder, it is not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy have become the go-to explanations of alternative healers, or that people believe their deceased grandmother is still alive because of quantum mechanics. Science and religion have the same roots, and they still tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? The area of science that is closest to answering these questions is physics. Over the last century, physicists have learned a lot about which spiritual ideas are still compatible with the laws of nature. Not always, though, have they stayed on the scientific side of the debate.

In this lively, thought-provoking book, Hossenfelder takes on the biggest questions in physics: Does the past still exist? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? She lays out how far physicists are on the way to answering these questions, where the current limits are, and what questions might well remain unanswerable forever. Her book offers a no-nonsense yet entertaining take on some of the toughest riddles in existence, and will give the listener a solid grasp on what we know—and what we don’t know.

* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF with key visual figures included in the book.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Sabine Hossenfelder (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Part gonzo journalist, part curious child, part teacher, and part accomplished researcher, Sabine Hossenfelder is a unique writing talent and a unique science popularizer. One cannot help being provoked reading her prose, as she knows how to push your buttons. But she also abhors bullshit, which makes her take on the deepest human questions and what physics has to say about them worth looking at, and also ensures that it will be different than those other physics books of grand verbosity about frontier physics. You might agree with her. You might not. But you will come away from the experience enriched, and will think about the world differently than you did before.” (Lawrence Krauss, best-selling author of The Physics of Star Trek, A Universe from Nothing, and The Physics of Climate Change)

Great as long as focused on physics

Great story, much in the spirit of the previous book. Many human issues, such as consciousness or free will, are being analysed from the scientific, or quantum mechanics, viewpoint, That part was truly great, especially when the author would convinvingly deal with those problems and clearly distinguish what human beliefs can be classified as consistent with science and which ones are a-scientific. That was the case until the book covers the problems of AI, the discussion of which was limited to the author's personal opinion and possibly faith. While anybody nowadays claims expertise to pass their biased opinion on the ethics of AI, the end of the book clearly viotated its own rules of engagement with scientific evaluation of facts.

I wish the author had read the book

I love watching Sabine on YouTube. She has a subtle delivery and delightful humor that was written into the book but it wasn't captured by the narrator.
It was a fun read and got me thinking. I argued back with my own thoughts about things. Those are the best books, really.
I especially loved her answer to multiple universes.

Excellent book, narrator's tone 'way off

I have been following Dr. Hossenfelder on YouTube for several years and very much appreciate her ability to explain some complicated physics concepts, her thoughtful challenges to the popular views of some theoretical physicists concerning quantum mechanics and the origins/nature of the universe, and her explorations of the intersections of science and philosophy.

I also appreciate her dry wit and general sense of humor, which comes through in her YouTube videos, and interviews. However, for me, the narrator changes the tone of the text so frequently from the kind of tone Dr. Hossenfelder uses, and to such an extent, that it was distracting enough to give up on the audiobook less than half-way through and go back to the text.

To explain the kind of tone I'm talking about, consider how one could say: "I'm looking forward to seeing you." The tone could be, to various degrees, heartfelt, sarcastic, monotone, even angry. I think the narrator was trying to capture Dr. Hossenfelder's conversational style which is not typical "academic lecture" and includes dry wit and even whimsy, but the narrator frequently makes the tone in turns sarcastic, disdainful, and whatever that tone is that some adults take on when talking to children or telling a fairy tale. It felt like someone was telling me an office story: "So you know how Accounting doesn't care whether your numbers have any relation to reality, right? As long as you 'fill out every little bit of part B on form XYZ and blah-blah.' So like who cares? So I just tell them..."

If you've never heard Dr. H. talk about the many profound and/or fascinating subjects discussed in the book, the narrator's tone may make no difference to you, or maybe the tone simply won't bother you. If you think think there might be a problem, however, and there's any way to preview the narrator's performance, I'd do that first.

Awesome book

Good book, a lot of information was put out and I doubt I can say I will be a to recall much. However, the information that I did retain has driven me to want to know and attempt to understand more.

UNCANNY VALLEY

Sabine Hossenfelder creates unease in listeners who struggle with understanding a world determined by the science of physics. Her first chapter is about the mystery of time. Time is an illusion created by one's mind. Your time is not my time because our perspectives are influenced by how fast we are moving. If we are in the same room, or one of us is on a train and the other is at the station, the difference is so infinitesimally small, times' relativity is not comprehended. However, in spacetime with the effect of gravity on radio signals and rocket guidance, time's relativity becomes navigationally critical.

"Essential Physics" may help some get closer to understanding the current state of science's explanation of life, but one may choose to be skeptical because sciences' pursuit of understanding life remains a work-in-progress. Physics study to date offers no answer to the meaning or destination of life. The truth remains in an "uncanny valley", a psychological concept of human unease, most recently compounded by genetics discoveries, computer animations, and A.I. influence on life.

Very Interesting Take on Science

This book starts out at a very basic level, but not so basic as to be boring or uninteresting. Many of the initial concepts should be taught to our children at an early age as this author has a magical way of explaining science and how it applies to everyone's lives. The author very adeptly draws you into the realm of scientific evidence and methods and then delves into how the evidence and methods support (or not) the science of our existence. I especially like the author's caring and understanding way of explaining science as opposed to religion and myths of common belief.

One take-away from this book is that there are scientists out there who are not judgmental but rather spend their time investigating our universe and explaining it to us non-scientists in a very understandable way.

I would recommend this book to anyone and would invite educators, especially those who specialize in elementary education, to adapt the early chapters of this book to a required curriculum for their students.

It is Still Whistling in the Dark

Gee but Sabine is an upbeat lady! You have to be to buck yourself up every morning to roll out of bed, glance at your husband and two children, and stagger off to yet another day in the lab solving esoteric equations when you believe it was all predestined and you had no choice in the matter and it doesn’t make any difference anyway since you know you are a tiny lump of sentient molecules on an insignificant planet in one of 200 billion galaxies sliding down the entropic slope to oblivion. But we can rejoice in the wonder of it all!

I’ve heard most of Sabine’s arguments before in her other works and on her YouTube channel, but was good to get it all in one place. I believe she makes the mistake of drinking her own scientific Kool-aid, in that anything that smacks of religion she dismisses as “a-scientific.” She isn’t overtly hostile like the New Atheists, just dismissive, as religion is outside of the scientific realm as being unprovable.

The trouble with this view is that yes, there is not an air-tight argument for the existence of God. But there is an air-tight argument for the existence for the man Jesus Christ. His life and times are attested to by irrefutable documents (look at the evidence for them). When he was here on earth, he claimed to be God (read the book of John, for instance). He was crucified and rose from the dead (read N T Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God).

These are examples of events that broke into Sabine’s predestined, predetermined universe to evince an entirely other level of power and intelligence. She speculates on whether the cosmos might have a “mind” of some sort as some of her esoteric-minded colleagues believe and she concludes that it does not.

The irony, of course, is that there is a mind behind all the laws of physics and biology and chemistry, and “we were eye-witnesses to his glory.”

What we can infer and explain from observation

Beyond that it's a-scientific, into other ways we make sense of the world and our experience, such as philosophy or religion or... Remarkably clear arguments. Excellent narrator.

Witty and deeply engaging physicist

A brilliant overview of the strengths of physics and reflections on what the science really cannot speak to.

I wish I read that when I was 16

it has the power to either give you an existential crisis or get you out of one.