In view of all the unifying ideas that I have discussed, such as quantum computation, evolutionary epistemology, and the multiverse conceptions of knowledge, free will and time, it seems clear to me that the present trend in our overall understanding of reality is just as I, as a child, hoped it would be. Our knowledge is becoming both broader and deeper, and, as I put it in Chapter 1, depth is winning. But I have claimed more than that in this book. I have been advocating a particular unified world-view based on the four strands: the quantum physics of the multiverse, Popperian epistemology, the Darwin-Dawkins theory of evolution and a strengthened version of Turing’s theory of universal computation. It seems to me that at the current state of our scientific knowledge, this is the ‘natural’ view to hold. It is the conservative view, the one that does not propose any startling change in our best fundamental explanations. Therefore it ought to be the prevailing view, the one against which proposed innovations are judged. That is the role I am advocating for it. I am not hoping to create a new orthodoxy; far from it. As I have said, I think it is time to move on. But we can move to better theories only if we take our best existing theories seriously, as explanations of the world.
Bibliography
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976. [Revised edition 1989.]
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Longman, 1986, Norton, 1987; Penguin Books, 1990.
David Deutsch, ‘Comment on “The Many Minds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” by Michael Lockwood’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1996, Vol. 47, No. 2, p. 222.
David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood, ‘The Quantum Physics of Time Travel’, Scientific American, March 1994, p. 68.
Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, Harvester, 1979, Vintage Books, 1980.
James P. Hogan, The Proteus Operation, Baen Books, 1986, Century Publishing, 1986. [Fiction!]
Bryan Magee, Popper, Fontana, 1973, Viking Penguin, 1995.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, 1963, HarperCollins, 1995.
Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework, Routledge, 1992.
John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Clarendon Press, 1986.
Charles H. Bennett, Gilles Brassard and Artur K. Ekert, ‘Quantum Cryptography’, Scientific American, October 1992.
Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, BBC Publications, 1981, Little Brown, 1976.
Julian Brown, ‘A Quantum Revolution for Computing’, New Scientist, 24 September 1994.
Paul Davies and Julian Brown, The Ghost in the Atom, Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype, Oxford University Press, 1982.
Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, Allen Lane, 1995; Penguin Books, 1996.
Bryce S. DeWitt and Neill Graham (eds), The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press, 1973.
Artur K. Ekert, ‘Quantum Keys for Keeping Secrets’, New Scientist, 16 January 1993.
Freedom and Rationality: Essays in Honour of John Watkins, Kluwer, 1989.
Ludovico Geymonat, Galileo Galilei: A Biography and Inquiry into his Philosophy of Science, McGraw-Hill, 1965.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1971.
Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Seth Lloyd, ‘Quantum-mechanical Computers’, Scientific American, October 1995.
Michael Lockwood, Mind, Brain and the Quantum, Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Michael Lockwood, ‘The Many Minds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1996, Vol. 47, No. 2.
David Miller (ed), A Pocket Popper, Fontana, 1983. David Miller, Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defense, Open Court, 1994.
Ernst Nagel and James R. Newman, Gödel’s Proof, Routledge 1976.
Anthony O’Hear, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics, Oxford University Press, 1989.
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, 1972.
Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, 7th edn, Longman, 1989.
Dennis Sciama, The Unity of the Universe, Faber & Faber, 1967.
Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, Basil Blackwell, 1989; Penguin Books, 1990.
L. J. Stockmeyer and A. K. Chandra, ‘Intrinsically Difficult Problems’, Scientific American, May 1979.
Frank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, Doubleday, 1995.
Alan Turing, ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Mind, October 1950. [Reprinted in The Mind’s I, edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, Harvester, 1981.]
Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology, John Wiley, 1972.
Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, Basic Books, 1977.
Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, Vintage, 1993, Random, 1994.
John Archibald Wheeler, A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime, Scientific American Library, 1990.
Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science, Faber & Faber, 1992, HUP, 1993.
Benjamin Woolley, Virtual Worlds, Basil Blackwell, 1992; Penguin Books, 1993.