I really, really enjoyed this book – it compensates for so many really bad “Great Courses” hours!
This is a well narrated (by the book’s author, see below for voice artist performance) overview on current (yes, Great Courses, CURRENT, not decades old) perspectives on the Quantum World, the Copenhagen Interpretation and approaches to the “macroscopic world and why it seems so different”.
The author does not downplay any perspective, he stays fair to the angles taken by different interpretations and points out obvious and not so obvious problems with the various approaches. This is a refreshing way of looking at things, not the standard “I know everything”-attitude others are taking.
When I first heard of the double slit experiment – early 1980s at school – some of us in the class came up with a question “what about there being a secondary wave or maybe the particle is guided by the wave instead of being one or the other?” Those (to us pupils simply obvious) questions immediately were turned down by (several, actually) physics teachers as “complete nonsense”. Turns out, we weren’t *that* nonsensical, after all, even if we were “only teenagers” and therefore not to be taken seriously. Which is to say, I enjoyed seeing the “pilot wave” idea been taken as an option a lot, even though I see its shortcomings.
Performance: The narrator does an overall good job, his pace is comfortable, his narration is quite clear and not as muffled, mumbled or irritating as many “Great Courses outstanding teachers”. His intonation is somewhat monotonous, though, but that was bearable enough.
However, he does speak in a strong American accent: Where others would split atoms, he kept on splitting ADAMS, which I found quite inhumane and, frankly, brutal. Just as an example. Then, with many theories and discussions on the matter having originated in Switzerland, Germany, Austria (and, obviously, Denmark), German language quotes seem necessary. In a (written) book this isn’t a problem, just have a footnote giving the original quote and use the Engli… sorry, American translation in the text. Here, the narrator tries to use the GERMAN quotes. Since I am German, this was really frustrating, as I could not understand a SINGLE one of those quotes. Why would someone, in a more or less scientific book, use a foreign language to “say something” if he isn’t fluent in that language? Just quote the English translation, so that you do not interrupt the narration.