Einstein's DreamsEinstein's DreamsThere is a place where time stands still. Raindrops bang motionless in air. Pendulums of clocks float mid-swing... As a traveller approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly...
It is 1905 in Berne, Switzerland. A young patent clerk has been dreaming marvellous dreams about the nature of time. He is Albert Einstein and he has almost finished his special theory of relativity. What were his dreams like those last pivotal months? Here in this extraordinary and highly acclaimed work by physicist Alan Lightman, thirty fables conjure up as many theoretical realms of time, dreamt up in as many nights.
In one world time is circular, it's people fated to repeat triumph and trial over and over and over again... in another, men and women try to capture time - which appears as a nightingale - in a bell-jar... in yet another, there is no time, only frozen moments.
All are visions that gently probe the essence of time, the adventure of certainty, the glory of possibility, and the beauty of Einstein's Dreams
It is really hard to do justice to this book, it, in all honesty, is like nothing I have ever read before. As it proclaims, it is a series of dream-like descriptions, similar to those that Einstein may have had, all questioning the worlds that may exist if different time concepts were true. We are led to worlds of abstract beauty with people living for the moment, or those rushing constantly, with people who aspire to the highest heights as a form of status symbol, or the people who never leave town for fear of the fact that should they return time will have passed so fast it won't be home anymore.
Perhaps it is more than understanding the mind of a physics genius, and instead a study of the differing perception of mankind as a whole, (for the people involved are always human, and I mean that not just anatomically, but mentally, and emotionally) their every action is understandable given their world. Paradoxically, in this world with a constant form of time, it is possible to witness almost every action portrayed within, though some perhaps not as literally as others (the old do not physically try to capture time).
The very idea of trying to understand the mind of such a genius as Einstein, and the title especially, may seem a tad pretentious, but Lightman, a physicist himself, has equipped himself well, and the book is a wonder to read, it's interludes, describing Einstein himself and his friend Besso are as simple, and beautiful as the abstract tales, but they allow a subtle glimpse in to the mind of one of the most important minds of the twentieth century.
Without question a wonderful little book.
Score 10/10
Thanks Matt, a brilliant present.
Page last updated on 9th January 1999
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