The draft manuscript was completed on November 25, 2010, at 120K words and just in time to fly out to Phoenix to attend Roger Waters’ performance of “The Wall,” which incidentally was just amazing beyond words. Ironically, the easiest part of the book project was writing the draft manuscript. There is so much work (and cost) in publishing a book, I can hardly believe it. Contemplating and overcoming the deep mysteries of the universe seemed like nothing compared to dealing with the publishing industry.
The book is now down to the relatively svelte count of 110K words and it should contain somewhere around 280 pages in the soft cover format I chose. I crafted the content so it could be enjoyed by the general reader as well as the more sophisticated physicist. I tried to write the book in a lively, engaging style with lots of entertaining thought experiments.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and impressions once you’ve read the book through from cover to cover. That is, of course, so long as you’re in the group of open-minded readers and scientists who don’t become indignant at the prospect that today’s science may be flawed and/or incomplete. I know I will look forward to the lively discussion that will likely ensue either way.
Simply follow the link to the book’s Facebook page to get a free copy of the eBook. You’ll be able to download the book as soon as it is released.
I wanted to give you, the readers of my blog, a head start on the free copies of the eBook. My team is planning some events starting in a few weeks to drive readers to gobble up the 1,000 free copies of the eBook that I’ve decided to give away.
Click here for your copy: LIKE my Facebook page & get a free copy of the eBook!
I eagerly await your comments!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Book Update: Building Momentum
Just like you, I can’t wait for the updates to end and for the book to actually get released. The publishing industry works in strange and mysterious ways, not always wonderful but often unknowable.
Of course, this sounds more exotic and pleasant than my actual experiences. Nonetheless, there’s been great progress and the project is moving forward.
I now have the fully formatted electronic proof of the manuscript and I’m proofreading it right now with the additional assistance of my editors. The editors have also completed the foreword and it’s being incorporated into the manuscript right now.
(Here it comes…) I’m hoping that the final revisions will be implemented over the next week and the manuscript will get uploaded to the printing house shortly thereafter. I’m also hoping that the eBook formatting will be completed and uploaded in time to release it on or before April 5. (I really hope I don’t regret making yet another prediction about the book’s release!)
The audio book version should release about four weeks after the eBook release, and the paperback version should release within a couple of weeks afterward. Hang in there with me!
My friends see my frustration about the release dates and remind me that some of the paradoxes I slay in the book have stood for millennia, so what could a few weeks possibly matter in the scheme of things? I understand the argument on an intellectual level, but it does awfully little to alter the frustration levels of my emotional and psychological selves! When I hear this, my intellect sits there calmly saying, “Yes, I suppose you are completely correct,” while my emotional and psychological selves are yelping frantically like little poodles and terriers at an approaching intruder.
It’s often said that we learn a great deal about patience in raising our children. Well, that seems true enough in my experience but I’m learning many more and new lessons about patience in publishing my book! I’ve spent 34 years nurturing this book and I want to birth it already! Not in weeks, but NOW!
I’ll provide the next update on the book next week. We’ll see whether my predictions are close to the mark…
Of course, this sounds more exotic and pleasant than my actual experiences. Nonetheless, there’s been great progress and the project is moving forward.
I now have the fully formatted electronic proof of the manuscript and I’m proofreading it right now with the additional assistance of my editors. The editors have also completed the foreword and it’s being incorporated into the manuscript right now.
(Here it comes…) I’m hoping that the final revisions will be implemented over the next week and the manuscript will get uploaded to the printing house shortly thereafter. I’m also hoping that the eBook formatting will be completed and uploaded in time to release it on or before April 5. (I really hope I don’t regret making yet another prediction about the book’s release!)
The audio book version should release about four weeks after the eBook release, and the paperback version should release within a couple of weeks afterward. Hang in there with me!
My friends see my frustration about the release dates and remind me that some of the paradoxes I slay in the book have stood for millennia, so what could a few weeks possibly matter in the scheme of things? I understand the argument on an intellectual level, but it does awfully little to alter the frustration levels of my emotional and psychological selves! When I hear this, my intellect sits there calmly saying, “Yes, I suppose you are completely correct,” while my emotional and psychological selves are yelping frantically like little poodles and terriers at an approaching intruder.
It’s often said that we learn a great deal about patience in raising our children. Well, that seems true enough in my experience but I’m learning many more and new lessons about patience in publishing my book! I’ve spent 34 years nurturing this book and I want to birth it already! Not in weeks, but NOW!
I’ll provide the next update on the book next week. We’ll see whether my predictions are close to the mark…
Saturday, March 19, 2011
The Process – Part 2 of 2
What astounded me most was the fact that only a handful of concepts appeared to underlie the whole heap of paradoxes, mysteries, complexities and misunderstandings. I had a respectable 70K words or so, at this point, so no one would have criticized me for providing an anemic book with too few thoughts or words.
But, once I had isolated what appeared to me to be the root elements preventing a comprehensive understanding of our universe, I really couldn't exercise sufficient self-restraint, so I proceeded to add one more section to the book. I wanted to see what would happen if I played around with subtle, understated refinements to these concepts. I wanted to see what would happen if I made some subtle tweaks to current scientific doctrine and yet remained consistent with scientific observations.
Paramount among the fundamental concepts was the need for a precise, unambiguous, objective, properly universal definition of “observer,” which oddly enough seemed to be lacking even though it represents the crux of both relativity and quantum mechanics. I found lots of circumstantially convenient, vague, subjective definitions but nothing terribly useful. This became the first step in my process.
During the final 50K words, I found and presented a single set of modest adjustments from which no paradoxes emerged. With these tweaks, the paradoxes of the universe just don't appear. Poof! Quite frankly, it was the last thing in the world I had expected.
As boring as it might, at first, seem to live in a universe without paradox, the universe appeared a strikingly more exciting place to me as it appeared to become understandable.
It seems to me that the consequences of the insights I propose potentially impinge on many or all facets of our current understanding of our universe.
Or maybe not, and I'm simply thoroughly and entirely wrong, which seems like a real possibility to me, too.
Nonetheless, I was willing to take a stab at it and leave it to others to evaluate and debate my thoughts. My hope is to get people thinking in new directions and pump some new life into increasingly stale cosmological discussions. Of course, my biggest hope is to be completely correct in every single thing I say in the book, but I'm just another flawed observer any way you look at it, so that's not the most likely outcome.
Your thoughts?
But, once I had isolated what appeared to me to be the root elements preventing a comprehensive understanding of our universe, I really couldn't exercise sufficient self-restraint, so I proceeded to add one more section to the book. I wanted to see what would happen if I played around with subtle, understated refinements to these concepts. I wanted to see what would happen if I made some subtle tweaks to current scientific doctrine and yet remained consistent with scientific observations.
Paramount among the fundamental concepts was the need for a precise, unambiguous, objective, properly universal definition of “observer,” which oddly enough seemed to be lacking even though it represents the crux of both relativity and quantum mechanics. I found lots of circumstantially convenient, vague, subjective definitions but nothing terribly useful. This became the first step in my process.
During the final 50K words, I found and presented a single set of modest adjustments from which no paradoxes emerged. With these tweaks, the paradoxes of the universe just don't appear. Poof! Quite frankly, it was the last thing in the world I had expected.
As boring as it might, at first, seem to live in a universe without paradox, the universe appeared a strikingly more exciting place to me as it appeared to become understandable.
It seems to me that the consequences of the insights I propose potentially impinge on many or all facets of our current understanding of our universe.
Or maybe not, and I'm simply thoroughly and entirely wrong, which seems like a real possibility to me, too.
Nonetheless, I was willing to take a stab at it and leave it to others to evaluate and debate my thoughts. My hope is to get people thinking in new directions and pump some new life into increasingly stale cosmological discussions. Of course, my biggest hope is to be completely correct in every single thing I say in the book, but I'm just another flawed observer any way you look at it, so that's not the most likely outcome.
Your thoughts?
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Process – Part 1 of 2
Please allow me to fill you in a bit on some of the steps in the process I undertook and captured in my book. It’s important to keep in mind that, if the explanation of everything were really succinct, I wouldn’t have needed an entire book in which to present it. It would be very silly to think that I could present some small excerpt of the explanation out of context and have it make any sense. No, thank you, I’d much rather be called a “crank” by someone who has actually taken the effort to read the book in its entirety.
Having said that, I do intend to place excerpts of the book on this blog over time to provide samples of the book’s content and to provide teasers to those hold-outs who have not yet obtained a copy of my book.
I decided that a new approach was required to overcome the hurdles faced by science in understanding the underlying nature of our universe, so I set out on an attempt to establish what that path might look like and the best way to take my first step onto it. Not wanting to rush unnecessarily into my selection of the approach, I spent a paltry three decades carefully and deliberately considering my options. Toward the end of the summer of 2010, I pinned down my starting approach.
I started writing my book on October 30, 2010. My original intention was only to describe this new scientific/philosophical approach by which I hoped to separate scientific truths from flawed, incomplete scientific interpretations. I had only wanted to capture and share my approach with others in the hopes that valuable new insights might unfold. It’s also only fair to share with you that I had absolutely no idea how the book was going to end when I started writing it.
Any new thoughts I propose have to be completely consistent with the large and growing body of increasingly precise scientific data/measurements. However, I was not willing to be equally and mindlessly loyal to the interpretations and models formed by others before me that may have contributed to today’s flawed and incomplete scientific understanding.
Along the way, I took inventory of the paradoxes and mysteries that emerged over the span of time ranging from pre-Socratic philosophies through today’s most contemporary scientific efforts. I dissected these paradoxes and mysteries down to the core component thoughts upon which each is based. In a way, I performed a genealogical analysis of these core fundamental thought structures, or memes. I then traced each of these memes back to their roots.
By the end of the book’s second section, I was shocked to discover that each and every paradox or mystery, of either the enduring or the more contemporary variety, was deeply related to every other one. Zeno’s paradoxes against motion appeared to me to be related to the results of the double slit experiment and even to the observation of non-luminous matter and other dark things. It became clear that overcoming any one of these mysteries held out the prospect of overcoming them all.
Which particular mysteries and paradoxes have captured your attention?
(The second part of this article will be posted later this week.)
Having said that, I do intend to place excerpts of the book on this blog over time to provide samples of the book’s content and to provide teasers to those hold-outs who have not yet obtained a copy of my book.
I decided that a new approach was required to overcome the hurdles faced by science in understanding the underlying nature of our universe, so I set out on an attempt to establish what that path might look like and the best way to take my first step onto it. Not wanting to rush unnecessarily into my selection of the approach, I spent a paltry three decades carefully and deliberately considering my options. Toward the end of the summer of 2010, I pinned down my starting approach.
I started writing my book on October 30, 2010. My original intention was only to describe this new scientific/philosophical approach by which I hoped to separate scientific truths from flawed, incomplete scientific interpretations. I had only wanted to capture and share my approach with others in the hopes that valuable new insights might unfold. It’s also only fair to share with you that I had absolutely no idea how the book was going to end when I started writing it.
Any new thoughts I propose have to be completely consistent with the large and growing body of increasingly precise scientific data/measurements. However, I was not willing to be equally and mindlessly loyal to the interpretations and models formed by others before me that may have contributed to today’s flawed and incomplete scientific understanding.
Along the way, I took inventory of the paradoxes and mysteries that emerged over the span of time ranging from pre-Socratic philosophies through today’s most contemporary scientific efforts. I dissected these paradoxes and mysteries down to the core component thoughts upon which each is based. In a way, I performed a genealogical analysis of these core fundamental thought structures, or memes. I then traced each of these memes back to their roots.
By the end of the book’s second section, I was shocked to discover that each and every paradox or mystery, of either the enduring or the more contemporary variety, was deeply related to every other one. Zeno’s paradoxes against motion appeared to me to be related to the results of the double slit experiment and even to the observation of non-luminous matter and other dark things. It became clear that overcoming any one of these mysteries held out the prospect of overcoming them all.
Which particular mysteries and paradoxes have captured your attention?
(The second part of this article will be posted later this week.)
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Update: This was a busy day!
I completed the first proof reading of the manuscript and returned the final comments and revisions to the editors. I'm exceedingly pleased with the way the book is turning out. A "Links" page has been added to the book's web site to help readers delve further into the topics covered in the book. I also approved production of the book mark which will be printed this week. (Everyone who pre-orders a copy of the paperback book at www.theunobservableuniverse.com will receive a signed book mark to show my appreciation!)
If all goes really well, then some key events are expected to occur next week including the final formatting of the paperback version and its upload to the printing house; the formatting, uploading, and release of the eBook; and the start of the audio book production.
I'm definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!
If all goes really well, then some key events are expected to occur next week including the final formatting of the paperback version and its upload to the printing house; the formatting, uploading, and release of the eBook; and the start of the audio book production.
I'm definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Into which group will you fall?
I have had other physicists and scientists review my book and provide their comments back to me. The results have been really absolutely fascinating. Each set of comments falls unambiguously into one of two black-and-white categories, and none occupy the grey area in between.
The first group reacted with fierce indignation, very much along the lines of, “Are you calling my god stupid?” These individuals didn’t finish the book. In fact, they abandoned the book somewhere in the middle, near my discussion of the Copenhagen Interpretation. Quite frankly, I took this as a good sign that I was on the right track. After all, it's not at all unlike how many scientists have reacted to bold new theories and breakthroughs in the past which turned out to be valid and propelled scientific thought in effective, new directions.
The second group reacted very differently. The individuals in this group read the book through to its conclusion. The feedback I received from this group was that they were angry with me. Upon further questioning, I discovered that they were angry because they had previously believed that they would provide the crucial insights by which to understand our universe, and that they now knew that wouldn’t be the case because they felt I had cracked that nut.
I make no claims that what I propose in my book is "The Answer." The scientific method, to which my readers and I surely subscribe, requires that this judgment be left to others. Whether I am right or wrong, there will surely be a spectrum of responses, and some of them will likely be critical and unkind. Yet, I’m willing to make my contribution by putting these new thoughts out into the world. I’m confident that the concepts in my book will spark some lively debates and this could only be considered a very good thing, regardless of which group you happen to fall into.
I would really like to get YOUR comments on this once you've read the book and especially after you've discussed it with others.
The first group reacted with fierce indignation, very much along the lines of, “Are you calling my god stupid?” These individuals didn’t finish the book. In fact, they abandoned the book somewhere in the middle, near my discussion of the Copenhagen Interpretation. Quite frankly, I took this as a good sign that I was on the right track. After all, it's not at all unlike how many scientists have reacted to bold new theories and breakthroughs in the past which turned out to be valid and propelled scientific thought in effective, new directions.
The second group reacted very differently. The individuals in this group read the book through to its conclusion. The feedback I received from this group was that they were angry with me. Upon further questioning, I discovered that they were angry because they had previously believed that they would provide the crucial insights by which to understand our universe, and that they now knew that wouldn’t be the case because they felt I had cracked that nut.
I make no claims that what I propose in my book is "The Answer." The scientific method, to which my readers and I surely subscribe, requires that this judgment be left to others. Whether I am right or wrong, there will surely be a spectrum of responses, and some of them will likely be critical and unkind. Yet, I’m willing to make my contribution by putting these new thoughts out into the world. I’m confident that the concepts in my book will spark some lively debates and this could only be considered a very good thing, regardless of which group you happen to fall into.
I would really like to get YOUR comments on this once you've read the book and especially after you've discussed it with others.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Debut of the cover art for The Unobservable Universe
Here it is: The book cover design for The Unobservable Universe!
The design was a collaboration among Rosalie Huang (www.rhgraphx.com), Catherine Rourke (www.editor911.com), and me. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out! In fact, I intend to submit the design to book cover contests and competitions and see how it stacks up. I'll keep my readers posted.
I'd really like to hear your comments on the design. You can follow this blog or post your comments on it at http://scotmtyson.blogspot.com.
The design was a collaboration among Rosalie Huang (www.rhgraphx.com), Catherine Rourke (www.editor911.com), and me. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out! In fact, I intend to submit the design to book cover contests and competitions and see how it stacks up. I'll keep my readers posted.
I'd really like to hear your comments on the design. You can follow this blog or post your comments on it at http://scotmtyson.blogspot.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)