Quantum Mechanics, The Afterlife, and a Dash of Yorkshire Wit, British author Linda Hoy explores the hidden world of faith.
God or science, angels or answers, prayers or physics – sounds like the start of an age-old argument. Our current discussion of how and why the world works seems fated to always end with the scientific and the spiritual at odds with one another. Whether you believe deeply in the purity of science or the absolute truth of religion, there’s one thing we can agree on – we’ll never really agree.
Right?
Enter: Linda Hoy and her new book, The Effect: Where Science Meets Spirituality. Hoy, once a diehard atheist became intrigued by a series of extraordinary coincidences associated with the death of her mother, and began to investigate the process of dying and the increasingly common phenomenon of near-death experience. She was amazed to discover that while spending millions on research into cosmetics and perfume, mankind spends virtually nothing investigating the most important question in life – what happens when we die? Writing with her classic Yorkshire humor and an endless curiosity, Hoy takes the reader on a journey down the rabbit hole into a scientific realm filled with alternate dimensions, multiple universes and quantum particles that seem to exist only when they know we’re watching them.
Expertly researched and a raucous page-turner, The Effect throws tradition to the wind and asks its readers to look a little deeper.
“We’ve been led to believe there’s a conflict between science and spirituality,” says Hoy. “Belief in some other dimension out there or life after death or prayer or being able to see into the future – we’ve been told that all of these are contrary to scientific thought. However, new modern science suggests that all these might be possible.”
It may see like all of this would be too much for Hoy to tackle, but she brings clarity and creativity to topics including:
Tackling the strange nature of quantum particles in a fun and readable way
The possible truth behind near-death experiences
How 96 percent of our universe is “missing” and what might be filling that gap
Scientific explanations of prayers, premonitions, and the paranormal
Linda Hoy is a British author who has written fourteen YA novels. In 1994 she was awarded the Children’s Book Award for Haddock ‘n’ Chips. Her first television play, Emily, was winner of the Silver Award for Drama in New York in 1985, and in 1999 she was granted the Arts Council Writers’ Award for new writing. From 2003-2007, Linda was the Royal Literary Fund Writer-in-residence at St John’s University in York and from 2007-2010, she was one of the few novelists to be appointed writer-in-residence at Sheffield University’s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences. Linda currently lives in Sheffield with a large fish tank fitted insider her old piano.
