Ok, I have never done this before, but its just the easiest way of communicating about the book. I've written a draft of comments about the book for next year's favorite reads of 2022. On which list this book is definitely going. Thank you Kokipy-ji! And I'm posting it below for discussion:

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

Wow. Many books are great, some are even works of genius, but I don’t remember ever before feeling that a book is unique in its essence, in its very construction. But this one is. Paraphrasing Philip Pullman’s cover blurb, it feels like Labatut has invented a new genre. This work cleverly and almost diabolically blends fact and interpretation, fiction and nonfiction, in a way that is delightful and unsettling. There is a frisson of discomfort to read a reliable account of people well known to you, mostly famous and important scientists, to trust an author’s impeccable research, only to have the hairs on the back of your neck rise as you realize that the narrative has shifted into an account that didn’t take place, or only might have taken place, and that you find yourself in the realm of neither fact nor fiction. You have been subtly taken in by a shrewd and unreliable narrator, one who is working to his own mysterious purposes.

What makes this book the richer, is that while no knowledge of the characters is required, the more you know about them, the deeper the mysteries. I have spent much time with many of the principals, as the intellectual revolution of 20th century physics has always fascinated me. Einstein of course, though he is mostly a silent partner here. Haber, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, de Broglie, Bohr: these are more than heroes to me. Did I ever know them?. They are the authors of one of the greatest intellectual accomplishments of humankind: the quantum revolution and quantum mechanics. A beautiful theory which yields correct results without fail. And which many would describe as inscrutable and incapable of being fully understood outside of the math.

So to put Labatut’s methods under the microscope, in a way that will spoil nothing, Fritz Haber invented the chemical warfare that introduced a heinous new method of killing during WWI. Days after its first use, his wife Clara committed suicide. One possibility historians have entertained is that her motive was her revulsion at what her husband had created. But there was no note, and the matter remains unresolved. In Labatut’s telling, Clara accuses Haber of perverting science and killing on a massive scale, and she shoots herself in the chest. Apart from the false conviction of the narrator, Labatut here has done something fascinating. He has taken one possibility, and by observing it, reified it. In this version, we observe their argument, and one of many possibilities is made concrete: we now have a result. In a parallel to quantum physics, a result remains in a state of possibility until observed, at which time it assumes definite characteristics. Schrodinger’s cat is both dead and alive until the box is opened. Clara kills herself because of Haber. Brilliant, and yet the reader must work to see the parallel.

The title: When We Cease to Understand the World. What are we to make of this? Clearly quantum mechanics is the manifest topic here. Perhaps the most entrenched, unassailable theory in science, and yet not understood in human terms. But Labatut has something more in mind. Like elementary particles, the very ceasing to understand itself has a host of possible manifestations. We know things but are ignorant of their ultimate consequences. We derive formulae but can’t follow our logic in doing so. We don’t understand our own cognitive processes in reaching conclusions. Some claim to understand things that no one else can follow, in a triumph of subjectivity. The consequences are personal and painful, not only theoretical and philosophical. Something has been lost, something that Labatut sketches out subtly through compelling vignettes. We are disconnected from ourselves, forsaking our human way of perceiving ourselves and our environment.

Labatut has written a beautiful book. His research is impeccable. There is a longing here for a time when the world was more comprehensible. Where is the acknowledgment of our changed relationship to what and how we understand? How effectively and elegantly he expresses his lament! And I feel astonished at his creation of a form in which to do so. Almost paralleling the process of the creators of quantum theory…..This is a work of art, and an achievement to be reckoned with.

Kokipy wrote:

I love your insights. I think your deep knowledge of the real people behind the fiction enriched your reading and laid bare a concept/structure/thread in the narrative that the author most certainly must have intended. Although it was not within my grasp
did you find it demoralizing, Star? I felt strongly that the demoralized characters were imprisoned by their own inability to see over the rim of the next discovery, and that Labatut has faith that we will get there in time. 
but that raises another point, which is the dichotomy I sensed between those who are capable of belief in what they cannot measure, and those who relish the power of the mind to know, to measure, to calculate, the universe. It is the latter who despair when they can’t understand the physics, I think. 

Thank you K - one of the reasons I love writing about what I read is that other readers can compare responses, not because I necessarily want to recommend. So thank you.

Too many thoughts in response - first, no I didn’t find it demoralizing, but I think aspects of what he’s getting at are demoralizing. For example, his lament at the loss of the halcyon days of human life are reminiscent to me of Tolkien’s disdain for modernity. You could call such people Luddites, but I think that is to fail to appreciate the valid point that something has been lost. We more and more live in a world of purely human creation, and I doubt we can do that without our share of failures and mistakes. And as the pandemic shows, we are and always will be biological creatures, part of the natural world, no matter what ideas we think, or what creativity we muster. I am concerned about extracting ourselves either physically or psychologically from nature, and from the environment in which we evolved, and for which I assume we are in important ways well suited. For example, I suspect human happiness might well be enhanced by living in small tribal groups of 20-60 individuals rather than cities of millions, but I can’t prove it. And yet one must allow the classic example of dentistry as unalloyed benefit compared to painful rotting teeth. In any case, we will have to consider this in constructing our generation ships, KSR's plausible skepticism noted.

Anyway, there is much that is demoralizing but that’s not the author’s fault. I won’t blame the messenger. And when it comes to physics, that’s another matter. Einstein lived the remainder of his days after 1927 troubled by QM, and said he spent a thousand fold more time on quantum mechanics than on relativity. He was not a quantum theory native, like those living after its discovery. For us we are kind of like fish not noticing the water. Am I troubled by the incomprehensibility of QM? That’s really what the question comes down to, not Labatut’s book which merely paints the  problem. For me, I accept the limits of human-style conceptualization as we become more and more able to describe the universe mathematically in ways that are farther and farther from human experience. Let’s not lose our grounding in our own experience in the process however.

oh by the way the cover - so it’s really a brilliant choice. When I was a neuroscience researcher as an undergraduate and a few years after (have I ever mentioned that one can find my research in the Wikipedia entry for “Cat Intelligence”?), I studied with the grad students. And they were getting steeped in the work of the founder of neuroanatomy, 19th century neuroanatomist Ramón y Cajal. He was really the discoverer of the neuronal structure of the brain, and as a skilled draftsman made gorgeous drawings of what he saw under the microscope. These are still appreciated now; I believe a coffee table book of his drawings came out a few years ago. 

Anyway, the cover is one of his drawings of neurons connecting and intercolating.  I have to be,I’ve that this is a reference to the neurological processes that Labatut is in some indirect way referring to, at least in part, when he writes of the ceasing to understand. There must be some underlying neural substrate for this, right? So the cover works for me in a way that was thrilling when I saw the work of my old friend, and even more so as I try to understand its presence!
 

Forgot one thing: I also was not demoralized by the stories of pain and tragedy in the vignettes. For one thing, I think he embellished these considerably. And for another, I’m suspicious of the association between creative or scientific genius and madness or emotional trauma. We find these to be part of human experience in people regardless of avocation, and I found myself dubious about that piece of his narrative.

I don’t disagree with you that is is a metaphor, but I don’t think it’s only a metaphor or that it’s not about physics. When Copernicus’ heliocentric solar system prevailed, the mind could easily comprehend the change. Newton’s brilliant revelations made common sense observations clearer and appeared to lend a comprehensibility to the universe. Even Einstein’s radical ideas were able to be grasped as his simple thought experiments demonstrated. Quantum mechanics is different. There just is no way yet found to explain in human terms the bizarreness of its implications. The alterations in common sense notions of cause and effect, the way that a particle traveling for billions of years is altered by, apparently, the act of observation, etc. This legitimately is something different. It’s wacky and mind bending.
But I agree it’s also a metaphor. That’s why I mentioned Tolkien. Something familiar and part of us is no longer comprehensible. We are alienated and confused. There’s a little Kafka in this. And I agree about the epilogue. He’s telling us this is not only about physics. It’s about modern life too.