A Review of Our Mathematical Universe, by Max Tegmark

Knopf, 2014

432 pages

The book opens with a chiller: “A second later, I died.” What follows is not a murder mystery being narrated by the deceased victim, but a whirlwind explanation of cosmology, quantum physics, and theoretical evidence for the idea of multiple universes. Welcome to the world of Max Tegmark, professor of theoretical physics at MIT, whose brain roams across the entire history of human scientific inquiry into the ultimate question: what is reality?

Our Mathematical Universe is Tegmark’s first book-length project, following his publication of over 200 academic papers, numerous essays for popular science outlets, and appearances in TV and radio documentaries. While a book on such a broad, esoteric topic could easily veer off-track into Ph.D. jargon, Tegmark keeps his expansive, quirky voice focused, transitioning smoothly between topics and helping bring the average Joe impressively close to understanding his world with, ironically, as little reliance on math as possible. Full Review »

A review of Isaac Newton, by James Gleick
191 pages. Vintage Books, $13.95

“Newton was not the first of the age of reason,” wrote economist John Maynard Keynes. “He was the last of the magicians…[H]e looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence.”

Isaac Newton—scientist, theologian, heretic—occupies a unique space in human history. Few others have possessed insight sufficient to comprehend nature from first principles, or the flexibility to invent the tools necessary to formalize their insights. Newton was the last to live in pre-Newtonian times: this is the extent of the changes he wrought, that his very name indicates a shift in understanding. Gottfried Leibniz, scientist and one of Newton’s many nemeses, once remarked to the Queen of Prussia that “taking Mathematicks from the beginning of the world to the time of [Newton], what he had done was much the better half.”

Such a towering figure is too easily occluded by his works, and Newton the human being is frequently forgotten. James Gleick, author of Chaos and The Information, reveals in his superb biography Isaac Newton a man flawed by vanity and superstition, a man who hoarded his secrets and who harbored intense animosity for those who presumed to second-guess his genius. Perhaps most notably, Gleick reveals a Newton in isolation, alone in a scientific landscape largely determined by lesser minds. Isaac Newton was, as Gleick puts it, “born into a world of darkness, obscurity, and magic.” Full Review »