Reality Revisited: from a Clockwork to an Evolving Quantum World

Profound revisions in the concept of reality are rare. Nevertheless the common world-view has changed radically in antiquity and at the turn of the modern era. Nowadays we are once again in the middle of a turmoil as modern physics cannot be understood within the particle-mechanistic framework. The book gives an comprehensive account of the change from the viewpoint of physics and philosophy. The focus is on quantum mechanics whose interpretation has remained unsettled for a century. Many accepted ideas concerning the nature of objects and their relations as well as the validity of objective description turned out to be half-truths suitable for macroscopic world. The re-evaluation of basic concepts provides a historic chance for achieving better understanding of man's relation with nature. When responsible humans are immersed into nature there is no ground for Cartesian substance dualism. The book includes an excellent introduction to the natural philosophy in antiquity and to the fundamentals of classical and quantum physics. It is recommended to everybody interested in the human enterprise to understand the nature of reality