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A review by studeronomy
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
5.0
I read this short, fascinating, creepy book in three days. I knew nothing about it when I started; my wife had told me I'd like it and so I read it. I don't normally read books she tells me I'd like, but she recommended it with a real sense of urgency so I decided I ought to read it right away.
"When We Cease to Understand the World" is a book about math and science, I guess. It's like a bizarre episode of NPR's "RadioLab" crossed with "The King in Yellow." Is it a novel? I think so, except that it isn't. It tells several stories about real, historical mathematicians and physicists who are haunted by their own ideas. Are these stories true? I didn't worry too much about that. The connections, intuitions, and associations I made while reading this book were certainly real. It's like some kind of Wikipedia novel—it mimics the way we think, the way I think, when jumping from entry to entry on Wikipedia, an energizing experience of making connections between disparate topics.
The book is a little like "Gödel, Escher, Bach," Douglas Hofstadter's famous book about recurrence, self-reference in mathematics, art, and music. "When We Cease to Understand the World" is much, much more accessible than "Gödel, Escher, Bach"—it's a much more conventional narrative—but both books are seemingly about everything while resisting clear answers or obvious theses. These are not easy books to summarize. Like Hofstadter, Benjamín Labatut is writing about the world—about everything that is the case, as Wittgenstein put it—without being precise. Like a particle in quantum physics (the ostensible topic of the book's longest, eponymous chapter), you can trace its subject and themes without identifying them clearly *or* you can identify one of its subjects and themes clearly without tracing its trajectory within the larger narrative. You can't *both* trace its subject and themes *and* identify the subject and themes with any precision. The experience is beautiful.
The book is also a little like an H.P. Lovecraft collection, full of stories of scientists who have been driven mad by their own ideas, by their strange encounters with reality. At one point, Labatut writes, "In every creature sleeps an infinite intelligence, hidden and unknown, but destined to awaken, to tear the volatile web of the sensory mind, break the chrysalis of flesh, and conquer time and space.” If that's not something out of Lovecraft...
The chapter about the two mathematicians who quit math and refused to discuss their ideas anymore was particularly spooky. Math is spooky. Physics is spooky. Ghosts are spooky. So is this strange and intoxicating book.
"When We Cease to Understand the World" is a book about math and science, I guess. It's like a bizarre episode of NPR's "RadioLab" crossed with "The King in Yellow." Is it a novel? I think so, except that it isn't. It tells several stories about real, historical mathematicians and physicists who are haunted by their own ideas. Are these stories true? I didn't worry too much about that. The connections, intuitions, and associations I made while reading this book were certainly real. It's like some kind of Wikipedia novel—it mimics the way we think, the way I think, when jumping from entry to entry on Wikipedia, an energizing experience of making connections between disparate topics.
The book is a little like "Gödel, Escher, Bach," Douglas Hofstadter's famous book about recurrence, self-reference in mathematics, art, and music. "When We Cease to Understand the World" is much, much more accessible than "Gödel, Escher, Bach"—it's a much more conventional narrative—but both books are seemingly about everything while resisting clear answers or obvious theses. These are not easy books to summarize. Like Hofstadter, Benjamín Labatut is writing about the world—about everything that is the case, as Wittgenstein put it—without being precise. Like a particle in quantum physics (the ostensible topic of the book's longest, eponymous chapter), you can trace its subject and themes without identifying them clearly *or* you can identify one of its subjects and themes clearly without tracing its trajectory within the larger narrative. You can't *both* trace its subject and themes *and* identify the subject and themes with any precision. The experience is beautiful.
The book is also a little like an H.P. Lovecraft collection, full of stories of scientists who have been driven mad by their own ideas, by their strange encounters with reality. At one point, Labatut writes, "In every creature sleeps an infinite intelligence, hidden and unknown, but destined to awaken, to tear the volatile web of the sensory mind, break the chrysalis of flesh, and conquer time and space.” If that's not something out of Lovecraft...
The chapter about the two mathematicians who quit math and refused to discuss their ideas anymore was particularly spooky. Math is spooky. Physics is spooky. Ghosts are spooky. So is this strange and intoxicating book.