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Title: Einstein's Dreams
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Manufacturer: Vintage
List Price: $12.95
Our Price: $7.28
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Einstein's Dreams by Vintage Incredible artistic perspective of physics and Einstein's theories | | I first read this my freshman year in college, it's been over 10 years and I still read this book occasionally in wonderment of the artistic visualization of Einstein's theories. Educational, resourceful and a wonderful read. It's fantastical . | | Einstein's Dreams by Vintage Wonderful, poetic novel... | It's called a novel, but it reads like an epic prose poem.
What a great journey of the imagination.
Some reviewers gave this one star? They should know Einstein himself once warned of a mind with too much knowledge in it and not enough imagination.
I read this and loved it when it first came out, and decided recently to assign it to my senior level poetry class (B period). They loved it. | | Einstein's Dreams by Vintage Essays on time and experience, perception and reality | Alan Lightman's book, Einstein's Dreams, reminded me somewhat of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, however in Einstein's Dreams the city remains the same, it is only the perception of time that changes. Lightman demonstrates how this one dimension can be manipulated in multiple ways. For example, if time has three dimensions like space, then you could be doing three different things simultaneously. Of course this leads to the next dream world whereby people get to experience their entire lives over and over but in each life they make different decisions with different consequences. In some dream worlds time is such an absolute part of people's lives that it is almost worshipped. In this world, since we can't rely on other humans at least we can rely on time to be consistent. In some of the dream worlds cause and effect are erratic and random. Thus milk is on the kitchen floor even before the milk jug is pulled from the refrigerator. In some dream worlds nothing really happens of any interest and thus time seems to be endless. In some dream worlds, various geographic areas experience time differently. In some of the dream worlds people are in the past and thus afraid of altering the future or they are in the future regretting the past. In some of the dream worlds time is circular so that you are born and die repeatedly. In some of the dream worlds time is liquid and thus makes a wake when something moves through it. The wake can then capture people and places and displace them in another time. In some of the dream worlds time can be slowed down, thus setting up a status system whereby those with the means can slow it down and those that are poor must experience time's effects sooner. In some of the dream worlds time goes backwards so that people move from death to birth. In some of the dream worlds time goes very fast for everyone, impacting relationships and meaning. In other worlds, time goes very slow, also having its effects. In some of the dream worlds, time is coming to an end and since everyone knows it, they respond accordingly.
The book seems like prose poetry, short 5 page chapters each presenting a new dream world. Whereas each dream world is unique in terms of perception of time, the towns have the same streets and landmarks as Berne Switzerland.
Thus the book is a clever essay on perception of time, but it also reflects the way we experience life and the values we hold and the memories we lose. All of these are impacted by time. This is one of those books that is reflective and thus is best read slowly since it evokes not only images but also personal memories as you read.
| | Einstein's Dreams by Vintage Mathematics | | I have a degree in Mathematics and I love this book. But not for the obvious reasons (physics and time...). I love this book because it is romantic in a odd way. It reads almost like poetry (that everyone can understand). This book reminded me of a Tim Burton movie. I love this book. | | Einstein's Dreams by Vintage Simply Told Complexity | Delightful and thought-provoking, this "novel" is a quick read with images and ideas that will linger in your mind long after you put it down. Each vignette explores a different interpretation of time, presented as a different dream of the young Einstein as he works out his theory of relativity in early 20th century Switzerland. Each dream-theory on the essence of time stands as an existential poem, a study in physics, and a meditation on how to live. I found some "dreams" more compelling fables than others, and actually thought of another possible dream that was not included.
Here's what I would have added:
If you subscribe to the Big Bang Theory (that the universe originated billions of years ago in an explosion that emanated from a single point of nearly infinite energy density), then it would explain why the universe is expanding. However, it seems to follow that this expansive period will eventually end, and then the universe will begin contracting, until it once again recoils into a single point of nearly infinite energy density. And then another Big Bang occurs. Ad infinitum. We cannot know how many times this has happened, how many times we have been here in our current atomic assembly before. Does this imply that there is indeed fate? That we are doomed to repeat it (albeit with billions of years in between repetitions)? Does this explain the phenomenon known as deja vu?
| | Einstein's Dreams by Vintage Product Description | A modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.
Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence. | | Einstein's Dreams by Vintage Amazon.com | | If you liked the eerie whimsy of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Steven Millhauser's Little Kingdoms, or Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths, you will love Alan Lightman's ethereal yet down-to-earth book Einstein's Dreams. Lightman teaches physics and writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helping bridge the light-year-size gap between science and the humanities, the enemy camps C.P. Snow famously called The Two Cultures. Einstein's Dreams became a bestseller by delighting both scientists and humanists. It is technically a novel. Lightman uses simple, lyrical, and literal details to locate Einstein precisely in a place and time--Berne, Switzerland, spring 1905, when he was a patent clerk privately working on his bizarre, unheard-of theory of relativity. The town he perceives is vividly described, but the waking Einstein is a bit player in this drama. The book takes flight when Einstein takes to his bed and we share his dreams, 30 little fables about places where time behaves quite differently. In one world, time is circular; in another a man is occasionally plucked from the present and deposited in the past: "He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future ... he is forced to witness events without being part of them ... an inert gas, a ghost ... an exile of time." The dreams in which time flows backward are far more sophisticated than the time-tripping scenes in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, though science-fiction fans may yearn for a sustained yarn, which Lightman declines to provide. His purpose is simply to study the different kinds of time in Einstein's mind, each with its own lucid consequences. In their tone and quiet logic, Lightman's fables come off like Bach variations played on an exquisite harpsichord. People live for one day or eternity, and they respond intelligibly to each unique set of circumstances. Raindrops hang in the air in a place of frozen time; in another place everyone knows one year in advance exactly when the world will end, and acts accordingly. "Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic," writes Lightman. "Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting.... In this world, artists are joyous." In another dream, time slows with altitude, causing rich folks to build stilt homes on mountaintops, seeking eternal youth and scorning the swiftly aging poor folk below. Forgetting eventually how they got there and why they subsist on "all but the most gossamer food," the higher-ups at length "become thin like the air, bony, old before their time." There is no plot in this small volume--it's more like a poetry collection than a novel. Like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, it's a mind-stretching meditation by a scientist who's been to the far edge of physics and is back with wilder tales than Marco Polo's. And unlike many admirers of Hawking, readers of Einstein's Dreams have a high probability of actually finishing it. |
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