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A review by peripetia
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
3.0
I feel like I didn't get the point of this book. On one hand, we have very interesting stories of famous (male) scientists. On the other hand, these are fleshed out by fiction invented by the author. Why?
The author pretty much just tells stories of scientists, their lives, and their discoveries. I found this fascinating as the history of science is one of my special interests. I just don't really understand what the author was trying to say here. Was he just imagining the lives of the scientists outside of their work? Why? What is the point? His own amusement?
I was also quite annoyed at the end - I learned all kinds of interesting facts, except now I don't know what is fact and what is fiction. Those were blended really well, which is both great and also frustrating.
It's not exactly the focus being on male scientists, some of them not well known, that bothered me. It's more that the women of these stories are vague and thinly drawn side characters, often literally nameless. This bothered me the most in the story of Schrödinger and his sexual obsession with a teenage girl, who is present in the story quite a lot, but who is only referred to as "Doctor Helwig's* daughter" and nothing else. Why?
And this too is apparently fictional, which makes me wonder even more why she couldn't have a name. I mean, I figured that out when listening to Schrödinger's fantasies and him molesting the girl's body, but that's a pretty heavy story to come up with. Why? I have no idea if Schrödinger really was into young girls or not, but if he was, a much better story could have been told about that. Instead we get a tortured genius enamored with a vixen/virgin.
Also there really are buried, interesting stories about women scientists trying to break into the masculine world of science, but this was not of interest to the writer, I guess.
I just don't know what else to say except that I don't understand the point of this book. Cool stories, but so what? I guess it could be about how science kind of gets away from us sometimes and surpasses us, but again this was in part made up, and what is the lesson here anyway? Stop doing science? Mathc will really fuck you up if you get into it? Maybe I'm just really black and white here.
Finally, I don't understand the point of the final part about his life. Just... meh.
*I think it was Helwig. I listened to the audiobook so I'm not 100% sure.
The author pretty much just tells stories of scientists, their lives, and their discoveries. I found this fascinating as the history of science is one of my special interests. I just don't really understand what the author was trying to say here. Was he just imagining the lives of the scientists outside of their work? Why? What is the point? His own amusement?
I was also quite annoyed at the end - I learned all kinds of interesting facts, except now I don't know what is fact and what is fiction. Those were blended really well, which is both great and also frustrating.
It's not exactly the focus being on male scientists, some of them not well known, that bothered me. It's more that the women of these stories are vague and thinly drawn side characters, often literally nameless. This bothered me the most in the story of Schrödinger and his sexual obsession with a teenage girl, who is present in the story quite a lot, but who is only referred to as "Doctor Helwig's* daughter" and nothing else. Why?
And this too is apparently fictional, which makes me wonder even more why she couldn't have a name. I mean, I figured that out when listening to Schrödinger's fantasies and him molesting the girl's body, but that's a pretty heavy story to come up with. Why? I have no idea if Schrödinger really was into young girls or not, but if he was, a much better story could have been told about that. Instead we get a tortured genius enamored with a vixen/virgin.
Also there really are buried, interesting stories about women scientists trying to break into the masculine world of science, but this was not of interest to the writer, I guess.
I just don't know what else to say except that I don't understand the point of this book. Cool stories, but so what? I guess it could be about how science kind of gets away from us sometimes and surpasses us, but again this was in part made up, and what is the lesson here anyway? Stop doing science? Mathc will really fuck you up if you get into it? Maybe I'm just really black and white here.
Finally, I don't understand the point of the final part about his life. Just... meh.
*I think it was Helwig. I listened to the audiobook so I'm not 100% sure.