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

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: central nerve cells, speculative leap, inner universe, University of Vienna, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran science writer Panek's pairing of the dual icons Einstein and Freud, whose labors were in widely disparate fields, is both natural and inspired. He uses his formidable writing skills to illuminate two of the 20th century's most notable accomplishments, the theory of general relativity and the discovery of the unconscious, weaving them into an informative and interesting history of the scientific method. Panek's explanation of Einstein's theory of relativity is excellent, and readers will with pleasure understand this counterintuitive concept. He is equally good at describing how Freud developed his theory of the unconscious. Panek also describes how the two rejected the 19th-century scientific paradigm, which held that the more accurate measurement of physical aspects of the universe would unravel its secrets. As Panek (Seeing and Believing) states, "...Einstein and Freud wound up venturing where their contemporaries did not because at a certain point, they didn't investigate. They thought. They reconceived the problem." Besides providing valuable biographical detail about both Freud and Einstein, Panek demonstrates a wide-ranging knowledge of the development of scientific thought and philosophy, as well as the major developments in both cosmology and the study of human anatomy. There is a remarkable amount of information in this short book, and Panek's valuable thesis—that the triumph of 20th-century science was the discovery of the invisible workings of the universe and ourselves—is well made.
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From Scientific American

A less likely pairing emerges in this book--Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Although they met just once and didn't know what to make of each other's work, Einstein and Freud became the foremost proponents of research on the frontier of the invisible, the search for the next level of scientific data--evidence we can't see.

Editors of Scientific American

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st Edition. edition (June 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670030740
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030743
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,098,515 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant and intoxicating, May 17, 2005

By	George DeMark (Chicago, Ill.) - See all my reviews

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!

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mysteries of gravity and consciousness, March 24, 2005

By	Mark Mills (Glen Rose, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

6 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half right, June 20, 2005

By	Stephen L. Kennamer - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.