Customer Reviews

The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm very careful about what science (or math. or anything that's not MBA) that I read, because usually these texts are dry, boring to the point of What's the Point? Why would an author write a book that seems to deliberately set out to lose readers is my question. But The Invisible Century is one of those extremely rare books (Bill Bryson's Short History of the World is the only other one in recent memory I can think of) that is not just fascinating, but also fascinatingly written, and that makes some extremely difficult ideas -- Einstein's theory's of relativy, hello? -- almost thrillingly understandable. I put down this book, and for the first time felt I understand what Einstein was driving at. Ditto went for Freud's theory of the unconscious.

Panek's amazing point (kind of profound, when you think about it) is that Einstein began probing the heavens at the same time Freud began experimenting with his theories of the unconsicous -- that basically both men (who did meet once, acc. to Panek!), were after the secrets that lay behind invisible screens -- Einstein the sky, and what lay beyond it, and Freud our dreamworld and our id. Really fascinating stuff.

Now as a topic, none of this is easy sledding. But it's RIchard Panek's great gift to make these profound contributions by two of the towering geniuses of the last century into something succinct, intriguing, readable, and easy-to-understand, while never patronizing the reader, or lapsing back into over-intellectual science talk. Except for the Bryson book, I didn't think there was such a thing as a science book I could not put down. But this is one. Buy The Invisible Century right now! You'll be glad you did!

Well, not so much a 'study' per se as an extended meditation on science, imagination, and the history of both in which Einstein and Freud serve as exemplars. Those critiques of TIC which take issue with its seeming elevation of Freud to a status, as theorist, on par with that of Einstein are, I think, mistaking Panek's intention. Though it is true that Panek has little to say about the empirical shortcomings of Freud's project (though not nothing altogether), he is quite right, I think, to see in Freud's project the same seeds of creativity and motivated truth seeking that propelled Einstein's own work. Panek's point is not that Freud was a scientist like Einstein was a scientist, but that both were representative of their time and similar in some important ways. Panek does a very nice job of establishing who these seminal figures were, what they did, and why, and why the life/work of one sheds light on that of the other. Less one star for a certain degree of redundancy in the writing.

Panek is very good at describing and explaining technical topics at the intelligent-layman level. This book and his "4% Universe" can actually give you a decent understanding of cosmology and the link to particle physics without the burden of having to know mathematics! 4% Universe would be a nice history introduction to a physics or astronomy student, but is not the place for finding actual technical data. The Invisible Century is also a very good high-level description of how modern science and scentific theory evolved from earlier scientific and pre-scientific thinking and analysis. The Einstein and Freud stories are discussed in parallel and you will be able to see how the combination of mathematical prediction and reproducible experiments distinguished the field of modern physics from psychoanalysis. This is also seen in the 4% Universe, as cosmology evolves from "just talk" to math and experiment-based science.

I suspect Panek sought to elucidate a philosophy of science that worked equally well for both Einstein and Freud. If so, the effort was unsuccessful. Panek makes a good argument for identifying gravity and consciousness as the two key mysteries left unexplained by 20th century science, but his arguments that Einstein and Freud shared a common ethos or methodology fall flat. Additionally, the reader is left suspicious that such a link might still be found.

The book relies heavily upon 'history of science' style stories about Einstein. Historians of science have worked out methods of presenting Einstein's breakthrough insight, light moves at a constant speed through out the universe, in understandable stories which can engage the non-technical reader. There is no need to bore the reader with wave mechanics, Lorenz functions, field dynamics or statistical physics, the notions are communicated in simple thought experiments and parables.

The same cannot be said for Freud's investigations of consciousness. Unlike the evocative history of Einstein and atomic energy, historians of psychology have generally dismissed Freudian notions. For Panek to interest us in Freud, this 'Freud as huckster' image must be over turned. Early in the book, Panek suggests Freud's perspective was founded on neuro-anatomy, a pure science few will link to Freud. Since neuro-anatomy is slowly emerging from an era where the brain was simply a 'black box' that worked, the reader might wonder if Freud really had something to say about neurology. If so, it might be of real interest.

Unfortunately, the connection with neurology is abandoned in the second half of the book. Panek instead reviews 'Positivism', the view that we can be positive about certain truths and only those truths can be the subject of science. Positivism has an odd place in contemporary philosophy-of-science. It is both 'entirely discredited in detail' and 'widely accepted in general'. In other words, it is a fine 'working premise', but don't ever write it down because it cannot be defended. Both Freud and Einstein were members of the founding Positivist society, and thus both played a role in its failures. This negative relationship will convince few readers Einstein and Freud had anything in common.

The failures of Positivism make an interesting history, but Panek isn't prepared to tell that story. It includes mention of the paradox of Schroedinger's Cat, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and Godel's Incompleteness theorem. None of these issues make it into the book, so Panek's review of Positivism is hollow at best.

The rating should be exactly two-and-a-half stars, averaging out five for Einstein and zero for Freud, but Panek gets half-a-star for gamely acknowledging Freud's deficits and trying spunkily to make the best of a bad case. His thesis is that these two investigators probed the secrets of heretofore invisible worlds, gravity on the one hand and the unconscious on the other. The difference is that Einstein insisted that his hypotheses about gravity be tested empirically and they passed the tests, whereas Freud's hypotheses either failed the tests or were so phrased as to defy testing at all. Both men illustrate the undeniable important of imagination in scientific researches, but Freud's imagination was promiscuous, uncontrolled, and corrupted by his myriad prejudices. The chasm between the two men cannot be explained by cavalierly stating that a "soft" science like psychology cannot be expected to be as empirical as a hard science like physics. Social scientists cannot be fantasists pure and simple, or else Tolkien is a social scientist. Freud more nearly resembles Tolkien than Einstein. So a book comparing Freud and Einstein is doomed on the title page: no comparison is possible; it is a matter of apples and oranges; and to boot, the apple is that proverbial bad apple than ruins the barrel. The therapeutic community is still trying to get the bad taste of Freudianism out of its mouth.