Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics [Paperback]

In order to fill enough pages for this thing to be longer than pamphlet-sized, Gary Zukav repeated just about everything he had to say many times, as if he couldn't help himself. He repeated a whole bunch of yuppie, new age, pseudo-oriental cliches, and, just to make things interesting, insulted Isaac Newton every few pages. Sorry Gary; but you don't have the brains to insult Isaac Newton. In defense of Issac Newton, why expect him to come up with quantum mechanics and general relativity when instruments needed to measure the slight differences between what his theories would predict and what the more contemporary theories would predict weren't even invented yet? Isaac Newton made the simplest theory that would fit what he observed, which is using Occam's Razor. Gary Zukav obviously doesn't know about something called the Scientific Method, where any theory, no matter how well accepted, can be overturned by an experiment. Our new theories will probably be overturned, too; but that's no reason to insult our brilliant scientists. That's just how science works.

The worst thing about "the Dancing Wu Li Masters" is how smug Gary Zukav sounds, as if he has everything figured out.

"The Tao of Physics," on the other hand, is brilliant. I learned a great deal about Eastern Philosophy, and how it constrasts with Classical Greco-Roman Philosophy. I also read the most lucid explanation of virtual particles that I have ever read. This book is so interesting, so exciting to read and so brilliant, that if anyone with the slightest bit of interest in physics and philosophy doesn't read it, well . . . it would be a crime.

He takes on an ambitious task. But he doesn't succeed. While avoiding even the simplest equations, he also says to the reader in effect "you wouldn't understand what the math expresses, so just trust me that it is deep and obscure and organic and dancing and only in our minds anyway". In my opinion the average reader may not know the math symbols, but is intelligent enough to understand a clear explanation. Unfortunately too many of Zukav's explanations are not clear.

Let's take the title as a case in point. He describes that the Chinese characters for Physics, "Wu Li", are ambiguous. This is not true because the tone in Chinese is a part of a word's identity. He doesn't know what he's talking about. But it gets worse. One of the possible meanings for the characters, he states, are "Wu"=matter or energy, and "Li"=organic patterns, such as woodgrain. Fine, but then he says "Wu Li" = patterns of organic energy. This is wrong, it is the patterns, not the energy, that are organic. Then later he says that "organic" = "conscious", and that therefore subatomic particles are organic and conscious, so by studying them we can learn more about ourselves. His logic evades me.

In discussing the famous 2-slit experiment, he avoids the obvious possibility that photons can exhibit wave-like behaviour. He keeps saying "but we KNOW they are particles, not waves". If physicists do "know" it, it is not at all convincingly explained in this book. Yet this is the most fundamental and important basis of quantum theory. If somehow I missed his explanation, then that confirms his writing is unclear.

He confuses the nature of statistical descriptions. He alternates between saying "this is not an explanation, it is a description of probabilities" and saying "there is nothing in the universe to explain, everything is a construct of our imagination". I could go on.

By contrast, an easy-to-read nontechnical explanation of quantum theory is "QED" by Richard Feynman (spelling?), who gained a Nobel Prize in this area.