The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design by Leonard Susskind

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
THE COSMIC LANDSCAPE tells the intriguing story of the gradual acceptance by physicists of the implications of certain weird aspects of quantum mechanics, implications that entail an infinite multiverse or megaverse comprising endless populations of universes of every conceivable form and variety. Here, too, is the story of the battle between the proponents of Intelligent Design, who draw on quantum mechanics to try to show that our universe is uniquely fashioned for life and intelligence, and scientists who believe that our universe arose as a result of natural processes, its hospitability to life and intelligence a product of scientifically comprehensible phenomena. When Susskind was a student, he was laughed at by his scientific idols for his ideas -- ideas which are now the solid stuff of physics. Over the last century, physical science has growth from Newtonian mechanics to Einsteinian relativity to a quantum-mechanical wonderland, a process that Susskind details beautifully in this fascinating book. For newcomers to quantum mechanics, it's slow going at first, but Susskind's patient, step-by-step discussion of basic concepts is understandable to any intelligent reader, and soon the novice has enough of the new concepts under his belt such that the reading begins to go faster and faster. By the end, one is whizzing through the brave new multiverse the author has introduced to us, delighting in every parsec of it. I got my copy through the Science Fiction Book Club; that's how accessible it is even to laymen. I loved it.


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