Book Review: When We Cease to Understand the World

´The night gardener used to be a mathematician, and now speaks of mathematics as former alcoholics speak of booze, with a mixture of fear and longing´. 

When We Cease to Understand the World by the Chilean writer Benjamin Labatut, shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize is first and foremost a great example of science history writing. Covering the most dramatic episodes of scientific discovery since the end of the 19th century through the tormented personalities of its authors - Fritz Haber, Grothendieck, Schrödinger, Karl Schwarzschield, Heisenberg etc. - it is a realistic landscape of how limited is human knowledge. Sounds as an oxymoron but drunken from the sea of knowledge we sip from every single moment we may forget this basic knowledge. 

The book is rich in information and full of details, portraying more or less known scientific personalities - like, for me, Shin´ichi Mochizuki - focusing more on their personalities and struggles than on their achievements. It succeeds at a great extent to insert the complex knowledge - especially pertaining to quantum physics and complex mathematical equations - into a mentality frame and a specific historical sequence.  

We are extolling the power of mind and of scientific discoveries as such, but it´s our Enlightment expectations which take over sometimes, and sometimes it is just the lack of proper information about what we are praising. But really was Enlightment such an Enligtened time in the history of humanity? As any good book - no matter the topic - When We Cease to Understand the World is raising questions after questions about science, humanity and human decision-making and responsibility. 

We can read the book as a novel - and it is mostly written as such - but also as a popular science book, when the attribute of ´popular´ does not mean necessarily mediocrity. It is a book abour our present and the power we have to both use our mind for good or for bad, although most probably we don´t have too much control over our own achievements. Those who realize it, like the mad mathematician Grothendieck, ended up out of time. Like the author´s gardener featured in the last chapter of the book for whom talking about mathematics is like the memory of a booze for an alcoholic. Therefore, Voltaire´s ´cultiver notre jardin´ acquires a very different meaning.