I encountered this book through a recommendation that a friend gave. It's an altogether new genre (non-fiction novel) that the Chilean author Benjamin Labatut has invented and for anyone with some interest in science, history and the wonders of pure genius, this is a must read.
He beautifully weaves groundbreaking discoveries, ethical dilemmas and personal struggles of some of the greatest minds (and some more I never knew). Fairly thought provoking to say the least.
Any thoughts you guys have on this one? Cheers!
by jach1986
3 Comments
I thought it was OK. Started strong. I wasn’t quite as moved as it got more fictional. I didn’t find myself getting annoyed at the physics/maths content, which is an achievement (often this is bad). It says something when the guy who tried to build WMDs for the Nazis is one of the more sympathetic characters in a book.
I’m in favour of anything that helps spread awareness of what a monster Erwin Schrödinger was, if only so we can cancel the fucking cat thought experiment. It’s a deliberately stupid idea that people universally misinterpret and it contributes to the pseudoscientific BS that surrounds quantum mechanics. Obviously the Schrödinger equation stays, but people don’t understand maths well enough to misunderstand the equation so I’m less bothered by that one.
I bought The Maniac and am looking forward to reading it. We are living in John Von Neumann’s world.
Overall I enjoyed it. The beginning a bit more, especially the chapter about Haber – it was well constructed and nuanced. As the book went on parts of it became a bit strange. All the details about the ( imagined ) sexual frustration of Heisenberg was a little too much and unnecessary in my opinion. However, I´m still planning to read The Maniac, because the author does know how to spin a compelling story about real life scientist.
I just finished it myself, and greatly enjoyed it. Like the other commenters, I thought it was much stronger in the beginning (especially the first section, “Prussian Blue”) and got less compelling as it went along. In particular, I became more concerned with which parts were fictional and which were factual, because I think the seams show a little more.
Even so, I find myself still thinking about the book’s ideas, days later. Some of the thoughts rattling around in my brain:
* Each of these brilliant scientists pushes beyond the known world, and what they find there drives them mad, to some degree or another. Is the implication that there are things we simply aren’t supposed to know? The sequence where… Heisenberg? Goes into the bar and the mysterious stranger lectures him and ends with the line from which the title is drawn leaves me with this impression, and the ending section, “The Night Gardner” does as well. Choosing not to use fertilizer, and the night gardner himself being a former scientist choosing to live in simplicity and obscurity, lead me to believe that Labatut believes a simpler life would be better for all–or at least a world without quantum exploration.
* The novel ties together each scientific advance with it’s accompanying horrifying usage: Prussian Blue and cyanide, the Haber-Bosch Process and Chlorine gas, (and overpopulation?), etc. Many of these scientists are either portrayed as naive or end up in the midst of war efforts in which they are directed to commit the awful acts themselves; the book seems to be implying that in *our* modern world, every scientific advancement will be turned to evil because the people in power will it. Science carries with it the promise of progress, but the price of progress is atrocity, without sufficiently powerful moral guardrails.
* I am personally compelled by the idea of greatness, both in regards to what is required to achieve it, and how so often achieving greatness leaves people unfit for normal society. These men all touch the void, and are left in varying states of madness. The best of them, Grothendieck (who seemed crazy to begin with), felt compelled to remove himself and his work from the world because of what he saw, as did Mochizuki, and the world around them couldn’t understand why.
* I found myself thinking of *Oppenheimer*, of course, but also *Zone of Interest.* Both compelling movies which touch on aspects of Labatut’s story.
I also will be reading *The MANIAC*, and I’m quite looking forward to it.