Some quotes:
`...one thing I want to communicate... doubt whether the foundations of the
world are indeed to be grasped *solely* by the discovery of a perfect and
eternal mathematical law... we are beginning to see evidence of an
alternative view... [fundamental order and regularity] might have arisen...
through a process of self-organisation, by means of which the world has
evolved over time to become intricately structured... I myself rejected
such ideas when I first encountered them.' (p. 15)
`...I hope to convince the reader that the desire to understand the world
in terms of a naive and radical atomism in which elementary particles carry
forever fixed properties, independent of the history or shape of the
universe, perpetuates a now archaic view of the world.' (p. 18)
Of course he's not talking talking about the phase changes and uncouplings
at symmetry breaking or anything so simple.
I have to say that this perspective troubles me deeply. It smacks of what
I call `black holism'. But Smolin is one of the smart cookies, and I'm
looking forward to the rest of his book once I get off the phone...
Damien Broderick