Einstein’s Dreams is, in a word, lovely. It’s fluffy without being unsubstantial, and thought-provoking without being overly heady. It’s sort of physics meets fiction meets poetry meets philosophy, neatly packaged into a prologue, epilogue, thirty vignettes and three interludes.
There is no plot and practically no characters. Einstein, though featured as a character, only appears here and there. The book begins with a young Einstein at his desk in a patent office, toying with his theory of relativity. What follows are thirty two- to three-page anecdotes, each a different musing about time: a world where time flows like a river, a world where time is only the present, a world in which cause and effect are unrelated.
As literature, these little vignettes are just delightful. Each is a quirky little examination of human nature, betraying little truths about the ways in which we interact with the world and time. As for the science of it, Dad, you’ll have to read this one and point out all the parallels and references to actual science. I was only able to identify a few moments of science-turned-anecdote -- enough to recognize that there are lots more flying under my radar, what with my über-limited understanding of these theories left over from my high school physics class and all. Lightman is a physicist and professor at MIT, so yeah. He’s a pretty smart dude.
The one drawback to Einstein’s Dreams is that it gets a little repetitive. The quirkiness of the different worlds starts to feel familiar, and towards the end I found myself counting to see how many vignettes I had left. But even with that complaint, I would definitely recommend this one. It’s easy enough that you can breeze through it in an afternoon, but it gives you quite a bit more to hold on to than your typical breeze-through-it-in-an-afternoon type book. Basically, it’s the world’s classiest beach read.
Final Vote:
7.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment