Is Nature Supernatural? A Philosophical Exploration of Science and Nature

Reading Is Nature Supernatural? is like taking a prep course for a cocktail party hosted by nerds. Weighing in with well over 600 pages of daunting subject matter, Simon Altmann's book grapples with big questions like "causality," "how to handle space and time," and "quantum states." Sound like fun? Surprisingly, the book is lucid, interesting, and even humorous. Altmann, an Oxford mathematical physicist, is such a gifted expositor and teacher that attentive readers will be rewarded with comprehensible explanations of the central problems in logic, mathematics, and physics, including quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg principle, and general relativity.

Altmann's central argument is that mathematical truths are empirical. That is, they emerge from our experiences, not from some purely conceptual realm or Platonic heaven. While Altmann's main thrust holds little interest for nonspecialists, he is such an engaging and funny writer that many of the chapters can stand alone. In particular, the chapters on probability, paradoxes like Zeno's Achilles and the Tortoise, and his early chapters on logical principles and causation are good reading on their own. --Eric de Place