Scan barcode
javierquintas's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
imdillionen's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Niin. Nämä nyt menee pitkälle yhdestä korvasta sisään ja toisesta ulos, kun oma fysiikan ymmärrys on niin olematonta. Kammottavaahan tämä on. Voisivatko miehet keksiä vaihteeksi jotain kivaa? Joka ei esim. tuhoaisi maapalloa ja meitä. Kovin kauniisti kirjoitettu teos, kerroksinen, sivistynyt, kehollinenkin.
lpm100's review against another edition
fast-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Book Review:"When We Cease To Understand The World"
3/5 stars
" Fictional interpolations into scientific biographies is gimmicky and not really all that helpful."
********
The first thought is that being on the New York Times Best Books list is not really a guarantee of being all that great. (Slightly better than Oprah's book club, which is a nearly 100% predictor of being trash.)
There is a verse in Tanach (Shemot, 33:20 "But you cannot see My face, for a human being may not see Me and live.”)
that reminds me of certain of these events:
A scientist losing his mind in behind the discovery of some brilliant series of inventions happened so much that it borders on sociological cliché at this point.
(Gödel starved himself to death. Grigori Perelman turns down $1 million in Nobel prize money and another $15,000 in fields prize money because he refused to accept the prize. He lives in the basement with his mother playing ping pong all day.)
I really do wonder why are these secrets only open to people that are frankly crazy? And do they become crazy after they figure these things out, as it seems from this book?
Or was this Discovery process and impelling factor only in pushing them over the edge? (p.74: "After spending so long gazing down at the foundations of mathematics, his mind had stumbled into the abyss.")
Here we add:
1. Grothendieck made his discoveries and then spent several decades in a peripatic state of existence, cut off from his family members.
2. Shinichi Mochizuki. Takes all the trouble to write proofs and then won't present or defend them or answer any questions about them.
Another cliché: Jewish scientists at the top of their game. Albert Einstein. Fritz Haber. Karl Schwarzchild. John von Neumann. (It is interesting to speculate about the linkage between Ashkenazi Jewish hyperintelligence, madness and natural selection.)
Yet another cliché: Sexually freaky scientists (We already knew about Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger and Richard Feynman.)
To this, we add a rather unflattering portrayal of Irwin Schrodinger, as well as the, um, sexually expansive Grothendieck.
******
Topics covered:
1. Zyklon A
2. Prussian blue
3. Haber process for nitrogen fixing
4. Prussic Acid
5. Schrödinger equation
6. deBroglie wave particle duality
7. Heisenberg uncertainty
8. Singularities
(Basically, nothing that you would not know if you took a couple of semesters of undergraduate physics or even read a book or two about popular physics.)
Honorable mentions (but not covered):
1. René Thom: Catastrophe theory
2. Weil conjectures
3. Mochizuki-Grothendieck conjectures
*******
Verdict:
This book is not worth a second read, because it's probably not worth a first read.
And that's for several reasons:
1. It gets really aggravating trying to separate out what really happened from the author's fictional interpolations. And you actually have to do research to find out if some of these things are true. (At least he is honest that the amount of fiction increases as the book goes on.)
Did deBroglie really build a replica of Notre Dame out of human feces? (p.114) I did not find any evidence that he did.
Was Schrodinger really lovesick over a 16-year-old that was at the brink of death and spent her entire life in a tuberculosis sanatorium?
2. No index, no photos.
3. There are other books that cover these topics better without all of the mystical realism / fictional spinach.. I would recommend "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat."
4. Magical realism is emphatically not my thing.
*******
There are several good quotes, But it's not really worth fishing through this whole book just to find them:
(p.75): "The atoms that tore Hiroshima and Nagasaki apart were split not by the greasy fingers of a general, but by a group of physicist armed with a fistful of equations."
(p.97): "The physicist - - like the poet-- should not describe the facts of the world, but rather generate metaphors and mental connections.
(p.109): "The father of relativity was a great master of visualization: all of his ideas about space and time had been born of his capacity to imagine himself in the most extreme physical circumstances. For this reason, he was unwilling to accept the restrictions demanded by Heisenberg, who seemed to have gouged out both of his eyes in order to see further."
(p.187): ".... The sudden realization that it was mathematics which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we simply would not be able to grasp what being human really meant.... We use it [quantum mechanics], it works as if by some strange miracle, and yet there is not a human soul, alive or dead, who actually gets it."
3/5 stars
" Fictional interpolations into scientific biographies is gimmicky and not really all that helpful."
********
The first thought is that being on the New York Times Best Books list is not really a guarantee of being all that great. (Slightly better than Oprah's book club, which is a nearly 100% predictor of being trash.)
There is a verse in Tanach (Shemot, 33:20 "But you cannot see My face, for a human being may not see Me and live.”)
that reminds me of certain of these events:
A scientist losing his mind in behind the discovery of some brilliant series of inventions happened so much that it borders on sociological cliché at this point.
(Gödel starved himself to death. Grigori Perelman turns down $1 million in Nobel prize money and another $15,000 in fields prize money because he refused to accept the prize. He lives in the basement with his mother playing ping pong all day.)
I really do wonder why are these secrets only open to people that are frankly crazy? And do they become crazy after they figure these things out, as it seems from this book?
Or was this Discovery process and impelling factor only in pushing them over the edge? (p.74: "After spending so long gazing down at the foundations of mathematics, his mind had stumbled into the abyss.")
Here we add:
1. Grothendieck made his discoveries and then spent several decades in a peripatic state of existence, cut off from his family members.
2. Shinichi Mochizuki. Takes all the trouble to write proofs and then won't present or defend them or answer any questions about them.
Another cliché: Jewish scientists at the top of their game. Albert Einstein. Fritz Haber. Karl Schwarzchild. John von Neumann. (It is interesting to speculate about the linkage between Ashkenazi Jewish hyperintelligence, madness and natural selection.)
Yet another cliché: Sexually freaky scientists (We already knew about Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger and Richard Feynman.)
To this, we add a rather unflattering portrayal of Irwin Schrodinger, as well as the, um, sexually expansive Grothendieck.
******
Topics covered:
1. Zyklon A
2. Prussian blue
3. Haber process for nitrogen fixing
4. Prussic Acid
5. Schrödinger equation
6. deBroglie wave particle duality
7. Heisenberg uncertainty
8. Singularities
(Basically, nothing that you would not know if you took a couple of semesters of undergraduate physics or even read a book or two about popular physics.)
Honorable mentions (but not covered):
1. René Thom: Catastrophe theory
2. Weil conjectures
3. Mochizuki-Grothendieck conjectures
*******
Verdict:
This book is not worth a second read, because it's probably not worth a first read.
And that's for several reasons:
1. It gets really aggravating trying to separate out what really happened from the author's fictional interpolations. And you actually have to do research to find out if some of these things are true. (At least he is honest that the amount of fiction increases as the book goes on.)
Did deBroglie really build a replica of Notre Dame out of human feces? (p.114) I did not find any evidence that he did.
Was Schrodinger really lovesick over a 16-year-old that was at the brink of death and spent her entire life in a tuberculosis sanatorium?
2. No index, no photos.
3. There are other books that cover these topics better without all of the mystical realism / fictional spinach.. I would recommend "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat."
4. Magical realism is emphatically not my thing.
*******
There are several good quotes, But it's not really worth fishing through this whole book just to find them:
(p.75): "The atoms that tore Hiroshima and Nagasaki apart were split not by the greasy fingers of a general, but by a group of physicist armed with a fistful of equations."
(p.97): "The physicist - - like the poet-- should not describe the facts of the world, but rather generate metaphors and mental connections.
(p.109): "The father of relativity was a great master of visualization: all of his ideas about space and time had been born of his capacity to imagine himself in the most extreme physical circumstances. For this reason, he was unwilling to accept the restrictions demanded by Heisenberg, who seemed to have gouged out both of his eyes in order to see further."
(p.187): ".... The sudden realization that it was mathematics which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we simply would not be able to grasp what being human really meant.... We use it [quantum mechanics], it works as if by some strange miracle, and yet there is not a human soul, alive or dead, who actually gets it."
erintmckay1216's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I now understand how people can view math as beautiful
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
4.0
I don't normally like this kind of mixing of fact and fiction where real life people are used as characters but this was a brilliant read. The author has a beautiful way when it comes to talking about scientific ideas.
helena_marie's review against another edition
5.0
This one is an absolute showstopper! Frontrunner for my favorite book this year. Immediately finding all other works by Benjamín Labatut and placing them on hold at the library
lesbiangrandpa's review against another edition
5.0
I have never been more interested in science or men’s lives. But really, this is one of those books you think about for a long time.
ericfheiman's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
A fascinating book. Hints of W.G. Sebald, but wholly its own thing. I’ll be thinking about this one a lot, while also glad to have learned a lot of about physics!
bakalamba's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0