The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe

This chapter talks about Michael Frayn's new book about time and causality, which are considered victims of his erudite, imaginative, funny and dazzlingly clever philosophical inquiry. Frayn unbolts the fabric of the universe and things that most are mostly regarded as certainties, such as the laws of science and the dependability of logic, that vanish like smoke. It points out that scientific laws are human artefacts, with no real existence outside our statement of them in the wake of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. The chapter considers logic as a system that was made up and not an inherent condition of the natural world. The universe is an invention, and all its characteristics exist only as figments of the human brain.