Yet Wilczek says that contradictions of Euclid are "literally inconceivable." What doesn't Wilczek understand there? Kant's theory, or simply the meaning of "synthetic"? Either way, it is not a good start for us examining his ideas about "reality" - although, to be sure, more informed minds have made similar mistakes. This means that their contradictions can be conceived with as much logical facility as their affirmations. Thus, Kant asserted that the axioms of Euclidean geometry are synthetic and not analytic propositions. The second reveals what must be his shallow knowledge and defective understanding of the history of philosophy. The first requires that Wilczek has a deep understanding of the ontology of matter, which, from the evidence now of his book, he does not.
Wilczek has turned up a couple of times already in these pages, thanks to his occasional column in The Wall Street Journal, "Wilczek's Universe." Key quotations are featured above, and they do not inspire confidence. However, metaphysics is not what we get, and the physics cannot quite measure up to the ambition. We might think that "reality" calls more for metaphysics than it does for just physics. But while Rovelli's book is modestly titled Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Wilczek's is more ambitiously subtitled Ten Keys to Reality. He has written a short book on physics, much as here we have seen from Carlo Rovelli. Geometry that fails to follow Euclid's assumptions is, according to Kant, literally inconceivable.įrank Wilczek, "No, Truth Isn't Dead," The Wall Street Journal, June 24-25, 2017, p.C4.įrank Wilczek is a Nobel Laureate physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also holding honors or positions at other institutions. Impressed by the beauty and success of Euclidean geometry, philosophers - most notably Immanuel Kant - tried to elevate its assumptions to the status of metaphysical Truths. Why is it so hard to accept, intuitively, that life and mind can emerge from matter?įrank Wilczek, "A Light Show of Thought," The Wall Street Journal, February 27-28, 2016. Fundamentals, Ten Keys to Reality, by Frank Wilczek, 2021 Fundamentals, Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek Penguin Press, New York, 2021
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