The Fabric of Reality David Deutch

Preface
 
If there is a single motivation for the world-view set out in this book, it is that
thanks largely to a succession of extraordinary scientific discoveries, we now
possess some extremely deep theories about the structure of reality. If we
are to understand the world on more than a superficial level, it must be
through those theories and through reason, and not through our
preconceptions, received opinion or even common sense. Our best theories
are not only truer than common sense, they make far more sense than
common sense does. We must take them seriously, not merely as pragmatic
foundations for their respective fields but as explanations of the world. And I
believe that we can achieve the greatest understanding if we consider them
not singly but jointly, for they are inextricably related.
It may seem odd that this suggestion — that we should try to form a rational
and coherent world-view on the basis of our best, most fundamental theories
— should be at all novel or controversial. Yet in practice it is. One reason is
that each of these theories has, when it is taken seriously, very counter-
intuitive implications. Consequently, all sorts of attempts have been made to
avoid facing those implications, by making 
ad hoc modifications or
reinterpretations of the theories, or by arbitrarily narrowing their domain of
applicability, or simply by using them in practice but drawing no wider
conclusions from them. I shall criticize some of these attempts (none of
which, I believe, has much merit), but only when this happens to be a
convenient way of explaining the theories themselves. For this book is not
primarily a defence of these theories: it is an investigation of what the fabric
of reality would be like if they were true.

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Acknowledgements
 
The development of the ideas in this book was greatly assisted by
conversations with Bryce DeWitt, Artur Ekert, Michael Lockwood, Enrico
Rodrigo, Dennis Sciama, Frank Tipler, John Wheeler and Kolya Wolf.
I am grateful to my friends and colleagues Ruth Chang, Artur Ekert, David
Johnson-Davies, Michael Lockwood, Enrico Rodrigo and Kolya Wolf, to my
mother Tikvah Deutsch, and to my editors Caroline Knight and Ravi
Mirchandani (of Penguin Books) and John Woodruff, and especially to Sarah
Lawrence, for their thorough, critical reading of earlier drafts of this book,
and for suggesting many corrections and improvements. I am also grateful to
those who have read and commented on parts of the manuscript, including
Harvey Brown, Steve Graham, Rossella Lupaccini, Svein Olav Nyberg,
Oliver and Harriet Strimpel, and especially Richard Dawkins and Frank
Tipler.

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