Choosing Reality: A Contemplative View
of Physics and the Mind
B. Allen Wallace
New Science Library (Shambala
Publications),
Boston & Shaftsbury (Eng)1989
various publishers for more recent
works:
I first found this book at a second
hand book store. The cover was graphically interesting (trails, I
believe, from particle physics experiments), and after checking it
out for a bit, found there was a good deal of information about the
history of physics, and how science develops ideas, in language that
I, the one-time liberal arts student, could actually mostly understand.
Once I got into the book, I found an
entire landscape that explained, to a great degree, some of the
questions that I've had on my mind from time to time. Why do we
think that today's science is immutable truth? Why is it that groups
of scientists looking at the same data, can come up with wildly
different answers? How real are the constructs that are generated to
explain unexpected results in experiments? What kinds of processes
generate new information about our reality, and how do we know if
they are true?