Paperback, 192 pages
Published Sept. 28, 2021 by New York Review Books.
A fast-paced, mind-expanding literary work about scientific discovery, ethics and the unsettled distinction between genius and madness.
Albert Einstein opens a letter sent to him from the Eastern Front of World War I. Inside, he finds the first exact solution to the equations of general relativity, unaware that it contains a monster that could destroy his life's work.
The great mathematician Alexander Grothendieck tunnels so deeply into abstraction that he tries to cut all ties with the world, terrified of the horror his discoveries might cause.
Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg battle over the soul of physics after creating two equivalent yet opposed versions of quantum mechanics. Their fight will tear the very fabric of reality, revealing a world stranger than they could have ever imagined.
Using extraordinary, epoch-defining moments from the history of science, Benjamín Labatut plunges us into exhilarating territory between fact and fiction, progress and destruction, genius …
A fast-paced, mind-expanding literary work about scientific discovery, ethics and the unsettled distinction between genius and madness.
Albert Einstein opens a letter sent to him from the Eastern Front of World War I. Inside, he finds the first exact solution to the equations of general relativity, unaware that it contains a monster that could destroy his life's work.
The great mathematician Alexander Grothendieck tunnels so deeply into abstraction that he tries to cut all ties with the world, terrified of the horror his discoveries might cause.
Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg battle over the soul of physics after creating two equivalent yet opposed versions of quantum mechanics. Their fight will tear the very fabric of reality, revealing a world stranger than they could have ever imagined.
Using extraordinary, epoch-defining moments from the history of science, Benjamín Labatut plunges us into exhilarating territory between fact and fiction, progress and destruction, genius and madness.
Fast-paced, fun and terrifying stories about ideas, people and complex systems at the edge of understanding, half fact, half fantasy. Stories of the breakdown of sensemaking, the ensuing madness, and about a darkness at the heart of things.
The creative madness of genius scientists. Evolves from fact through to terrifying fabulation, without straying from the essence. Strikingly original.
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A little over my head but still thought-provoking.
In the face of non-deterministic societal evil and the limits of an individual life or grasp or genius... "When We Cease To Understand The World" encapsulates it well. The format of documentary slipping into fantastical nightmare is fitting and yet weird to assess.
