There is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of the most fundamental phenomena in physics, yet have traditionally been assumed to be impossible to incorporate into fundamental scientific explanations. They are facts not about what is--the actual--but about what could be: counterfactuals. According to physicist Chiara Marletto, laws about things being possible or impossible may generate (...) an alternative way of providing explanations. This fascinating, far-reaching approach holds promise for revolutionizing the way fundamental physics is formulated, but also for providing essential tools to face existing technological challenges, from delivering the next generation of information-processing devices, beyond the universal quantum computer, to designing AIs. Each chapter in the book delineates how an existing vexed open problem in science can be solved by this radically different approach; and it is augmented by short fictional stories that explicate the main point of the chapter. As Marletto demonstrates, contemplating what is possible can give us a more complete and hopeful picture of the physical world. (shrink)

Shawn Carlson’s 1985 study, published in Nature, which ended with a devastating verdict of astrology, is scrutinized. The design of Carlson’s study violated the demands of fairness and its mode of analysis ignored common norms of statistics. The study’s piecemeal analysis of sub-samples avoided testing the totals for astrological effects, as did the neglect of test power, effect size, and sample size. Nevertheless, a correct reanalysis of Carlson’s two astrological tests reveals that astrologers matched profiles of the California Personality Inventory (...) to natal charts better than expected by chance with marginal significance (threeway forced choice, p =.054), and that a positive result was replicable by a different assessment method (10-point rating, p =.04). The results are regarded as insufficient to deem astrology as empirically verified, but they are sufficient to regard Carlson’s negative verdict on astrology as untenable. (shrink)

In answer to the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" this book is not like the cosmological theory you learned in school. It is not that there was a big bang in the beginning that resulted in every property from nothing. Rather, the question is examined as experience and phenomena. The "something" means the properties of the things and places that come to our conscious awareness of what it is like for each of us to observe something from (...) our own microcosmic center of the universe. This necessarily entails a consideration of astrology and correlative worlds. In contrast to how astrology is typically described as "influences," this approach uses a hierarchy/equality framework that relates mind to the cosmological order. Axiom-like principles and theories are used to introduce you, as the "astrological native," to your environmental interactions modeled into fundamental properties described in categories of urges, values, intentions, and skills. (shrink)