Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse

The grand goal of physicists is to find one grand, unified, “theory of everything”, which begs the question: why is our universe exactly the way it is, and not some other way? The latest theories take seriously hypotheses that there are actually multiple universes, that ours is just one of an infinitude of them, which happens to have the right conditions that allow physicists to be around to ask the question. This wonderful book looks at the long history of speculations about whether there is one universe (or world) or many, and the attendant implications for theology and science. The survey begins with the ancient Greek philosophers; travels through the early Christian church fathers; devolves into the natural scientists and Enlightenment thinkers; and concludes with the physicists of today. But the more ‘science’ tries to rid itself of the need for a god/creator, the more it runs up against the unknowable and mysterious, invariably blurring physics into metaphysics at scales of infinity and eternity. The arguments grow convoluted, but the author excels at reminding the reader of the prior theories and connecting the philosophical evolutions; teasing out implications; and translating theoretical physics into something comprehensible to a non-specialist. This book was a fun, mind-stretching read, clear and enlightening.