When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut review / The dark side of science

 

Benjamin Labatut

Books of the year

BOOK OF THE DAY

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut review – the dark side of science

An extraordinary ‘nonfiction novel’ weaves a web of associations between the founders of quantum mechanics and the evils of two world wars

John Banville
Thu 10 Sep 2020 07.30 BST

G

od does not play dice with the world, Albert Einstein famously declared, to which Benjamín Labatut would surely retort: perhaps not – but the devil does. In fact, Einstein himself had a lifelong niggle of doubt about mathematics, the discipline that we suppose keeps the Lord away from the gaming tables. How is it, he wondered, that an intellectual tool invented by humans can comprehend, account for and even manipulate so much of objective reality? That the physical world should be amenable to something we made up seemed to him suspect.

When we cease to understand the world by Benjamin Labatut / Review

Books of the year

When we cease to understand the world 

by Benjamin Labatut

Winstondad

December 1, 2020

 

I’m late to this it has already been on a couple of year-end lists in the papers I have seen. itis described as a non-fiction novel. To me it is a digressive work the like I have read by another Spanish language writer Augustin Mallo who also uses scientific facts and history in his stories. Benjamin Labatut own Life story is as interesting Born in Rotterdam he grew up in Hague, Buenos Aires, and Lima a real mix of places. He has had two works of fiction out and this is his first book to be translated into English and he has called it a non-fiction Novel.