A review by jocelyn_sp
Disturbing the Universe by Freeman Dyson

3.0

I re-read this after a long interval (possibly 30 years or more) because I picked it off the shelf for a Facebook list. I forgot that it is a collection of essays forming a piece-wise memoir, with the gaps and repetitions that implies. The first couple are the best, with the memories of Dyson's formation as a mathematical physicist, and his experiences of Operations Research group in London in World War II. Later essays are weaker, because patchier, and displaying some of the arrogance of a top physicist in the 1950s. This book had a big influence on me, planting the idea of mathematical physics as an aspiration, showing how finely-tuned the universe is for life, as well as other ideas. Dyson was a nuclear enthusiast with dreams of space colonisation, which was fun then for a reader of Asimov and Heinlein, but looks naive and hubristic now.