author : Chiara Marletto

There is a vast class of properties, central to the understanding of physical reality, that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They relate not only to what is true—the actual—but also to what could be true: the counterfactual. This is the Science of Can and Can’t.

A pioneer in the field, physicist Chiara Marletto explores the extraordinary promise that this new approach holds for revolutionizing the way fundamental physics is formulated and for confronting existing technological challenges, from delivering the next generation of information-processing devices to designing AIs. But by contemplating the possible as well as the actual, Marletto goes deeper still, showing how counterfactuals can break down barriers to knowledge and form a more complete, hopeful, and rewarding picture of the universe itself.