WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD
by Benjamin Labatut
"Like the moon in Buddhism, a particle does not exist: it is the act of measuring that makes it a real object."
In five connected vignettes, which begin with the invention of a tint called Prussian Blue in the 18th century to chemical warfare in WWI and the gas used by the Nazi’s in the death camps, Benjamin Labatut illuminates the affinity between advanced knowledge and destruction, and the madness that might ensure among progenitors.
You’ll have to love science, or be fascinated, to read this magnetic prose, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West, which made the shortlist for the National Book Award. The novel, and one must use the term loosely by virtue of a free-floating narrative bereft of plot, was listed by the NY Times as one of the best ten books of 2022. Now I see why.
Most of the book is a retelling of the scientific revelations and mishaps by master minds of the last two centuries. Only one final fictional character, a reclusive mysterious night gardener, explains that “it was mathematics — not nuclear weapons, computers, biological warfare or our climate Armageddon — which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we would simply not be able to grasp what being human really meant.”
In the era of AI and the redrawing of geopolitical boundaries and battle lines, the novel rings especially profound, reading like a cross between a history textbook and gothic fiction.
“The true horror” of the singularity, [Karl Schwarzchild] told a fellow mathematician, was that it created a “blind spot, fundamentally unknowable,” since even light would be unable to escape it. And what if, he continued, something similar could occur in the human psyche? “Could a sufficient concentration of human will — millions of people exploited for a single end with their minds compressed into the same psychic space — unleash something comparable to the singularity? Schwarzschild was convinced that such a thing was not only possible, but was actually taking place in the Fatherland.”
As physicist Karl Schwarzchild says at one point, “only a vision of the whole, like that of a saint, or a madman or a mystic, will permit us to decipher the true organizing principles of the universe.”
The book is peppered by revelations of the human spirit, the inquiring mind, and dissonance of all types, which are endlessly fascinating, even as you will wonder, often, where is this going?
Did you know the first symptom of a psychological disturbance is the inability to contend with the future? If you consider that, you will realize how implausible it is that we are able to exert control over even an hour of our lives.
I should have stayed awake in my early morning high school physics class, because most of what is written here is new to me. Truly enlightening. And, even as Albert Einstein looms large, of course, his compatriots and combatants loom larger, undermining each other in the often desperate search for meaning in a complex universe.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle shredded the hopes of all those who had put their faith in the clockwork universe Newtonian physics had promised. According to the determinists, if one could reveal the laws that governed matter, one could reach back to the most archaic past and predict the most distant future. If everything that occurred was the direct consequence of a prior state, then merely by looking at the present and running the equations it would be possible to achieve a godlike knowledge of the universe. Those hopes were shattered in light of Heisenberg’s discovery: what was beyond our grasp was neither the future nor the past, but the present itself. Not even the state of one miserable particle could be perfectly apprehended.
The ending delivers the punch by extending the metaphor toward Nero’s fiddling.
The oldest tree on my property is a lemon, a sprawling mass of twigs with a heavy bow. The night gardener once asked me if I know how citrus trees died: when they reach old age, if they are not cut down and they manage to survive draught, disease and innumerable attacks of pests, fungi and plagues, they succumb from overabundance. When they come to the end of their life cycle, they put out a final, massive crop of lemons. In their last spring their flowers bud and blossom in enormous bunches and fill the air with a smell so sweet that it stings your nostrils from two blocks away; then their fruits ripen all at once, whole limbs break off due to their excessive weight, and after a few weeks, the ground is covered with rotting lemons. It is a strange sight, he said, to see such exuberance before death.
The experience of reading this extraordinary novel is a little like witnessing a miracle: inexplicable as well as riveting. Thus, moving. I was reminded, often, of the concept [its origin is unclear] that just because we can doesn’t mean we should. I feel this ever more acutely as we move into an artificial intelligence universe, toward new ways of thinking, but not feeling. Labatut illuminates my fear for the human race. Yes, history repeats, or, at the very least, serves as a warning.
Available in paperback and audio, and for e-readers and, of course, at your library.