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The Multiverse: Copyright

The Multiverse
Copyright

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Notes

table of contents
  1. Half Title Page
  2. Series Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Annotated Contents
  8. Preface
  9. 1 Introduction
    1. 1. The Plan: Three Multiverse Proposals
    2. 2. What Do I Believe?
    3. 3. What Should You Believe?
    4. 4. What Would You Risk? Confidence vs. Caution
    5. 5. Beware the Beguiling Power of Words
    6. 6. Can We Be Sure That We Are in the Same Universe?
    7. 7. Notes and Further Reading
  10. 2 Physics and Philosophy from 1600 to 1900
    1. 1. The Tradition of Natural Philosophy
    2. 2. The Mechanical Philosophy
    3. 3. Newton’s Theory of Gravity: Unbelievable?
    4. 4. Optimism about Understanding Nature: “We Will Soon Deduce the Effect from the Cause”
    5. 5. Lowering Our Sights: Hume
    6. 6. Newton Again
    7. 7. Logic in the Doldrums—and Its Revival
    8. 8. Houses Built on Sand—and How to Repair Them
    9. 9. Notes and Further Reading
  11. 3 All the Logically Possible Worlds
    1. 1. The Legacy of Logicism: The Endeavour of Reduction
    2. 2. Logic as a Toolbox of Formal Systems: Modal Logics
    3. 3. Up to Our Necks in Modality
    4. 4. A Philosopher’s Paradise
    5. 5. Paradise, Part I: Intensional Semantics
    6. 6. Paradise, Part II: Modality and Laws of Nature
    7. 7. Paradise, Part III: Counterfactual Conditionals
    8. 8. Paradise, Part IV: Supervenience: Materialism, Physicalism, and Determinism
    9. 9. Existential Angst: What Are Possible Worlds?
    10. 10. Lewis’ Modal Realism
    11. 11. Notes and Further Reading
  12. 4 All the Worlds Encoded in the Quantum State of the Cosmos
    1. 1. What Is Matter? From Lumps in the Void to Fields
    2. 2. The Quantum State: Probabilities for Classical Alternatives
    3. 3. Amplitudes and Quantum Fields
    4. 4. The Measurement Problem: Schrödinger’s Cat
    5. 5. Solving the Problem: The Usual Suspects
    6. 6. Everett’s Proposal: A Bluff?
    7. 7. Doing Better with Decoherence
    8. 8. A Sketch Definition of “World”
    9. 9. On What There Is: Objects as Patterns
    10. 10. A Reversal of Ideas
    11. 11. Probabilistic Angst: What Is Objective Probability?
    12. 12. Subjective Probability to the Rescue?
    13. 13. Notes and Further Reading
  13. 5 All the Worlds from the Primordial Bubbles
    1. 1. Comparing the Everettian and Cosmological Multiverses
    2. 2. A Golden Age of Cosmology
    3. 3. Inflation . . . Eternally
    4. 4. Glimpsing the Landscape of String Theory
    5. 5. Angst About Explanation
    6. 6. Expected Because Generic
    7. 7. Difficulties About Being Generic
    8. 8. Biased Sampling: Eddington’s Net
    9. 9. Selection Effects in Cosmology: The Anthropic Principle and the Cosmological Constant
    10. 10. Confirming a Theory of the Multiverse
    11. 11. Notes and Further Reading
  14. 6 Multiverses Compared—and Combined?
    1. 1. What I Believe
    2. 2. Why Don’t We See the Other Universes?
    3. 3. One Reality to Rule Them All?
    4. 4. Envoi
    5. 5. Notes and Further Reading
  15. Note about the Bibliography
  16. Bibliography
  17. Index

© 2026 Jeremy Butterfield

University of Calgary Press

2500 University Drive NW

Calgary, Alberta

Canada T2N 1N4

press.ucalgary.ca

All rights reserved.

This book is available in an Open Access digital format published under a CC-BY-NCND 4.0 Creative Commons license, available freely to readers everywhere, at no cost to authors. The publisher should be contacted for any commercial use which falls outside the terms of that license.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The multiverse : a philosophical introduction / Jeremy Butterfield.

Names: Butterfield, Jeremy, author

Description: Series statement: BSPS open series, 2564-3169 ; no. 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20260171115 | Canadiana (ebook) 20260171123 | ISBN 9781773856957 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781773856964 (softcover) | ISBN 9781773856988 (PDF) | ISBN 9781773856995 (Open Access PDF) | ISBN 9781773856971 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Multiverse—Philosophy. | LCSH: Multiverse.

Classification: LCC BD511 .B88 2026 | DDC 113—dc23

The University of Calgary Press acknowledges the support of the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund for our publications. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

Funder Logos: Alberta government, Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, Certified Canadian Publisher

The manufacturer’s authorized representative in the EU for product safety is Mare Nostrum Group, B.V., Doelen 72, 4831 GR Breda, The Netherlands. Email: gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk

Copy editing by Glen Hoffmann

Cover image: Colourbox #2294958

Cover design, page design, and typesetting by Melina Cusano

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