Science of Can and Can’t, The: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals

Description

A luminous guide to how the radical new science of counterfactuals can reveal the full scope of our universeThere is a vast class of properties, which science has so far neglected, that relate not only to what is true – the actual – but to what could be true: the counterfactual. This is the science of can and can’t.A pioneer in the field, Chiara Marletto explores the extraordinary promise that this revolutionary approach holds for confronting existing technological challenges, from delivering next-generation processors to designing AI. But by contemplating the possible as well as the actual, Marletto goes deeper still, showing how counterfactuals can break down barriers to knowledge and form a more complete, abundant and rewarding picture of the universe itself.