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I am reading this now. By Benjamin Labatut. Very interesting. It was named one of the five best fiction books for 2021 by The NY Times Review of Books. So far I am not sure it is really fictional. It seems to be short biographical sketches of famous mathematicians and physicists at the moment they make incredible discoveries or solve great problems. Frankly it wouldn’t surprise me if it was all true, even though the details seem a bit unbelievable. I do recommend it but it is a bit odd as works of fiction go, I am not sure, indeed, where it is going.
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I shall have to investigate this one - it reminds me of something else recommended to me not so long ago that I can't right now remember the name of. Hmmn.
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So you didn’t find the unfortunate consequences of the brilliant discoveries as described to be a downer, K?
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Well, I haven’t finished it yet, but I am beginning to see where that might be where this is going. Sort of a KSR like conclusion about humans in space, perhaps. But my own view, uninformed and ignorant, is that if the great minds depicted in the book so far could get as far as they got, there is no telling where other great minds in the future, building on their work, could get. So I personally am not depressed, as of yet. I will revert when I have finished it, though, in case my view changes.
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Ok, will anticipate hearing a final report!
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Do you have a copy yet, Star? I have two and would be happy to share
I think there is much there to engage you whether or not it ends on an uplifting note.
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Having investigated it a bit, I've just acquired an e-copy for the virtual TBR stack. It looks a bit more serious than some of the space opera I've currently got lined up in there so I'll need to find the right mood before I start it.
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Kokipy wrote:
Do you have a copy yet, Star? I have two and would be happy to share
I think there is much there to engage you whether or not it ends on an uplifting note.
How did you get two? No I don’t have a copy - thank you!
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I will send one on. I have two copies because I made some kind of ordering error
I have finished it. It is primarily a work of fiction, and it does focus on the impossibility of really understanding where these theoretical physicists have gotten to in their thinking about quantum physics. But it did not leave me despondent. For several reasons.
first, I think it is a fine novel. Good art tends not to depress me even if the subject matter is a downer, because the ability of the human mind to create beauty is uplifting.
second, I didn’t really think the subject matter was a downer. Not for me, anyway. The author perceives and discusses the dichotomy between the minds that require certainty in understanding the world, and minds that tolerate uncertainty, since the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is the dominant trend in physics theory, people who need certainty may well be despondent at the proposition that we can’t understand the world. But I don’t think the author drew that conclusion himself, and at some level I don’t think the book is really about physics.
i hope you all read it and bring your thoughts to this discussion I do recommend it.
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I look forward to it! With curiosity