When We Cease to Understand the World

eBook

Published Sept. 3, 2017 by Pushkin Press.

ISBN:
978-1-78227-613-5
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This is a stunning book

If some scientists and mathematicians have seen further than others, it is by standing on the mountains of madness. This straddles between being a faithful and fanciful biography of insanity. It is written like a hyperactive friend trying to show you how all the things in the universe connect with each other - while you slowly back away in terror.

Are these ghost stories? Biographies dictated from beyond the grave? Counter-factual histories written to bemuse and confuse? These are the implausibly mystic crystal revelations that strain the boundary between realities.

Science is terrifying. It ought to be. It tells us that the world isn't quite what we thought it was. If you found out the secret to the universe, how would you react? In many ways, it remind me of Asimov's "Breeds There A Man…?".

The prose is sublime and the stories are haunting. Highly recommended!

Review of 'When We Cease to Understand the World' on 'Goodreads'

Interesting tale of the stories behind recent breakthroughs in modern mathematics and physics, placing them in their social and historical context. Stories became increasingly bizarre, with a touch of the magical realism that many Latinoamerican authors love - and that, I must confess, I despise.

Also an intro to quantum mechanics (the most I can take and/or understand lol). Thus some nice food for thought over the classic question of: does the universe behave following certain physical and mathematical patterns or are we creating them in order to make sense of reality?

TL;DR: as we say in Spanish, sin más.

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