{"product_id":"the-rigor-of-angels-isbn-9780593316306","title":"The Rigor of Angels","description":"\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eAND \u003ci\u003eNEW YORKER\u003c\/i\u003e BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest enigmas in the universe—the nature of free will, the strange fabric of the cosmos, the true limits of the mind—and each in their own way uncovered a revelatory truth about our place in the world\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] mind-expanding book. . . . Elegantly written.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A remarkable synthesis of the thoughts, ideas, and discoveries of three of the greatest minds that our species has produced.” —John Banville, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArgentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant pushed the assumptions of human reason to their mind-bending conclusions, but emerged with an idea that crowned a towering philosophical system—that the human mind has fundamental limits, and those limits undergird both our greatest achievements as well as our missteps.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around the powerful, haunting fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between reality “out there” and reality as we experience it. Out of this profound truth comes a multitude of galvanizing ideas: the notion of selfhood, free will, and purpose in human life; the roots of morality, aesthetics, and reason; and the origins and nature of the cosmos itself.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs each of these thinkers shows, every one of us has an incomplete picture of the world. But it's only as mortal, finite beings are we able to experience the world in its richness and breathtaking majesty. A soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, \u003ci\u003eThe Rigor of Angels\u003c\/i\u003e movingly demonstrates that the mysteries of our place in the world may always loom over us—not as a threat, but as a reminder of our humble humanity.Introduction: Where Did It Go? \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWherein we meet our three protagonists and are introduced to the problem that unites them\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PART I. STANDING ON A SLIVER OF TIME\u003cbr\u003e 1. Unforgettable\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eA man shows up in Moscow with an apparently flawless memory, and Borges writes a story pushing the idea to its extreme, touching on a paradox unearthed by Kant and explored by Heisenberg\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 2. A Brief History of This Very Instant\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eKant’s struggle with Hume leads us back to ancient Greece, where we encounter a very “queer creature,” the instant of change\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 3. Visualize This! \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eHeisenberg discovers discontinuity at the heart of reality and defends his chunky model against Schrödinger’s smooth waves\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e PART II. NOT BEING GOD\u003cbr\u003e 4. Entanglements \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eCiting special relativity, Einstein sides with Schrödinger, and they come up with a crazy thought experiment that turns the physics world on its head\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 5. Sub Specie Aeternitatis\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBack in Prussia, Kant asks what knowledge would be like for an omniscient being, and we are transported to the warring factions of early Christianity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 6. In the Blink of an Eye\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBorges turns to the kabbalistic idea of the aleph to get over Norah, and finds new love while exploring the paradoxes of simultaneity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PART III. DOES THE UNIVERSE HAVE AN EDGE?\u003cbr\u003e 7. The Universe (Which Others Call the Library)\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAs his country flirts with fascism, Borges organizes the shelves of a municipal library he imagines to be without borders\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 8. Gravitas\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eHeisenberg’s conversations with Einstein reveal an underlying reconciliation between relativity and quantum mechanics in a vision of the cosmos foreseen by Dante\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 9. Made to Measure\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eKant writes his third and final “Critique,” and his notion of beauty paves the way for an understanding of what guides inquiry in the physical sciences\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PART IV. THE ABYSS OF FREEDOM\u003cbr\u003e 10. Free Will\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eKant’s search for free will in a deterministic cosmos conjures the Roman patrician Boethius, who salvages freedom from fate while awaiting execution for treason in a dungeon in Pavia\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 11. Forking Paths\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe physicist Hugh Everett has the wild idea that new universes are birthed continuously, and Borges explores the same idea in a spy story\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 12. Putting the Demon to Rest\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eHeisenberg defends his decisions during the war, as we consider what his discovery meant for questions of free will and determinism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Postscript\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWherein we see how Borges, Kant, and Heisenberg, each in his own way, worked to undermine the e_ects of metaphysical prejudice\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAcknowledgments\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eNotes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBibliography\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eFurther Reading \u003c\/i\u003e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eIndex \u003c\/i\u003e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker \u003c\/i\u003ebest book of the year • A \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book • A \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003eEditors' Choice \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A joint biography of three figures who called attention…to the problems and paradoxes that emerge when we try to extend our ordinary way of seeing the world beyond the human scale…. Lucid and well-written…. An impressive work of scholarship.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] mind-expanding book. . . . Elegantly written. . . . This is a book about the tiniest of things—the position of an electron, an instant of change. It is also about the biggest of things—the cosmos, infinity, the possibility of free will. Egginton works through ideas by grounding them in his characters’ lives. . . . The beauty of this book is that Egginton encourages us to recognize all of these complicated truths as part of our reality, even if the ‘ultimate nature’ of that reality will remain forever elusive. We are finite beings whose perspective will always be limited; but those limits are also what give rise to possibility. When we choose what to observe, we insert our freedom to choose into nature. As Egginton writes, ‘We are, and ever will be, active participants in the universe we discover.’” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eThe Rigor of Angels\u003c\/i\u003e—the title is taken from a phrase in a Borges story— is a remarkable synthesis of the thoughts, ideas, and discoveries of three of the greatest minds that our species has produced. The richness of the book cannot be fully acknowledged in the space of a review. Mr. Egginton advances a great many knotty arguments and propositions, but he is never less than exciting, provocative, and illuminating.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—John Banville, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this sprightly intellectual history, Egginton explores the lives of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, the writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the physicist Werner Heisenberg in order to plumb some of the most profound questions of physics and philosophy: the limits of knowledge, the structure of space and time, free will.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is intellectual history of the highest order, an acrobatic feat that examines how the lives of Jorge Luis Borges, Werner Heisenberg, and Immanuel Kant all show the falsity of what we assume is fixed reality. What a poet, physicist, and philosopher can teach us about life and its uncertainties is told in exhilarating detail, and William Egginton makes his insights accessible even to readers who are none of the above. Love, quantum mechanics, and free will have never been dealt with so engagingly. Do not let that previous sentence scare you. \u003ci\u003eThe Rigor of Angels\u003c\/i\u003e is immensely rewarding.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Air Mail\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fresh and illuminating. . . . What Egginton brings to these analogies is a vivid style, a mind well stocked with examples and an eagle eye for reason’s illusions, as irresistible and as deceptive as the optical variety. . . . Makes for \u003ci\u003econ brio\u003c\/i\u003e reading.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ambitious . . . part ode to those who have caught glimpses of that elemental coherence we call truth and part elegy for our destiny as creatures doomed to glimpses only. . . . Egginton traces the invisible threads of revelation between Zeno’s thought experiments and Kant’s cathedrals of logic, between Dante’s cosmogony and the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, between Plotinus and Heisenberg, in order to illuminate and celebrate how that collaborative tapestry of thought has shaped ‘our conceptions of beauty, science, and what we owe to each other in the brief time given to us in this universe’. . . . Egginton pulls back the curtain of perception.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Maria Popova, \u003ci\u003eThe Marginalian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Is space and time continuous or discrete? Does free will exist? Is the universe finite or infinite? What would it mean to have perfect memory, perfect knowledge? . . . Masterful.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Colorado Sun\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Heady but accessible. . . . Bracing. . . . Egginton has a gift for distillation, and his admirable book helps us understand what’s at stake in some of the knottiest intellectual puzzles of the last three centuries.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWorld Literature Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Rigor of Angels\u003c\/i\u003e is a book of tremendous intelligence and beauty. William Egginton makes the paradoxes of physics, metaphysics, and literature intelligible by showing how these paradoxes shape the limits of the visible world and the possibilities of the invisible one. His writing reminds us that the best humanist inquiry unites the arts and the sciences in the patient pursuit of the truth.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Merve Emre, Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and contributing writer at \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fascinating reflection!” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Carlo Rovelli, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e best-selling author of \u003ci\u003eAnaximander and the Birth of Science \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eSeven Brief Lessons on Physics\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Humans are ambitious folk; we want to be able to know everything. But the world repeatedly confounds us with limitations on what can be known, and inescapable mediators between ourselves and the truth. William Egginton draws compelling connections between Borges, Kant, and Heisenberg, three of our most audacious theorists of limitation. We are left marveling at how much we are nevertheless able to capture of that elusive quarry called reality.”  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Sean Carroll, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e best-selling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Physicists attempt to explain reality, poets provide our emotional response to it, and philosophers try to establish cerebral connections. All of these endeavors are plagued with uncertainty. Werner Heisenberg, Jorge Luis Borges, and Immanuel Kant struggled with this uncertainty throughout their entire lives. Egginton takes us on an illuminating journey through the fascinating labyrinth created by their intertwined intellectual paths.”  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Mario Livio, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Golden Ratio\u003c\/i\u003e and Galileo and the Science Deniers\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This book brilliantly weaves together the core ideas of three of the greatest minds of Western literature, philosophy, and physics into a soul-searching narrative. Egginton masterfully illuminates the paradox of being human, of being caught between the search for the order behind things and the magic of the transcendent, of knowing that we are playthings in the hands of time, as our lives continually fork as we make choices and we become one self while imagining countless others.”  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Marcelo Gleiser, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Poetry, science, philosophy—for the ancients, these intellectual-artistic pursuits taught us what it is to be human: how to transcend our current station, how to grow and flourish, how to remain humble in the face of mystery and failure. Egginton’s \u003ci\u003eThe Rigor of Angels\u003c\/i\u003e is a stark reminder of what each of us can achieve if we only remember what remarkable beings we are.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—John Kaag, author of \u003ci\u003eHiking with Nietzsche\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Egginton, a humanities scholar, presents this overview with panache and a keen sense of story, making the more complex scientific theories accessible and entertaining. . . . Egginton further draws on the work of a range of thinkers that includes Boethius, Dante, and Einstein while illuminating the subjects of free will, memory, the nature of time, and the multiverse in this accessible, thought-provoking work.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eWILLIAM EGGINTON\u003c\/b\u003e is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of multiple books, including \u003ci\u003eHow the World Became a Stage\u003c\/i\u003e (2003), \u003ci\u003ePerversity and Ethics\u003c\/i\u003e (2006), \u003ci\u003eA Wrinkle in History\u003c\/i\u003e (2007), \u003ci\u003eThe Philosopher’s Desire\u003c\/i\u003e (2007), \u003ci\u003eThe Theater of Truth\u003c\/i\u003e (2010), \u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Religious Moderation\u003c\/i\u003e (2011), \u003ci\u003eThe Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World\u003c\/i\u003e (2016), \u003ci\u003eThe Splintering of the American Mind\u003c\/i\u003e (2018), and \u003ci\u003eThe Rigor of Angels\u003c\/i\u003e (2023), which explores the respective conceptions of reality in the thought of Borges, Kant, and Heisenberg. He is co-author with David Castillo of \u003ci\u003eMedialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media\u003c\/i\u003e (2017) and \u003ci\u003eWhat Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature\u003c\/i\u003e (2022). His next book, on the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, will be published in 2024.1 UNFORGETTABLE\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It was only midmorning on April 13, 1929, but Solomon Shereshevsky was already having a bad day. The journalist had just attended the daily editorial meeting of his Moscow newspaper when his section editor called him into his office. What was Shereshevsky playing at? his agitated superior asked him. Why did he just stare at the editor while he ran over the day’s stories? Was he too full of himself to take notes like all the other reporters?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Nonplussed, Shereshevsky explained that he didn’t need to take notes, because he remembered everything the editor said. Then he proceeded to recite the entire meeting back to him. Verbatim.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e By that afternoon Shereshevsky found himself amid a gaggle of psychiatrists at the Academy of Communist Education, among whom was a young doctor, Alexander Luria. Luria took on the task of testing Shereshevsky’s memory, which he did by reading him increasingly long lists of random words and numbers and asking him to recall them. By the end of the day Luria had to admit that the capacity of Shereshevsky’s memory “had no distinct limits.” As Shereshevsky would later recount, until that day he had no idea his abilities were anything other than normal. When he returned to work, he delivered to his editor the verdict of the state’s psychiatric experts: his memory exceeded “the bounds of what was believed to be physically possible.” His editor promptly advised him to change careers. So Shereshevsky found a circus trainer to manage him and began booking shows around the country as a mnemonist.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Despite his natural talent, Shereshevsky had to work hard at his new career, and he developed techniques to push his capacity ever further. To be able to recite back the lists of numbers, random words, poems in foreign languages, and even nonsensical syllables that audience members would call out to him, he landed on the strategy of picturing them drawn on a chalkboard. When it came time to recall the lists, he would return to this mental chalkboard and simply read from it out loud. To his horror he soon discovered that the very indelibility of his memory could interfere with his performance. Closing his eyes and finding his way back to the board on which he had arranged the sounds and images, he might instead come upon the board from an earlier performance and read back that list. To counteract this danger, he found he had to mentally erase or otherwise destroy the writing on his mental board. In short, to remember better, he had to learn to forget.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This interference didn’t wane with time. Luria, who continued to study Shereshevsky for decades, discovered he could flawlessly recall lists Luria had used to test him fifteen years prior. In fact, Shereshevsky waged an almost constant war against the images and associations from the past that threatened to flood his every waking moment.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It wasn’t just memories that menaced his perception of the present. Shereshevsky suffered from synesthesia, sensory crossover. A sound of a certain pitch might produce a coppery taste on his tongue; numbers appeared as specific figures with rich, unchanging characteristics. For most of us, 87 is a number, say, of pages read or years lived; Shereshevsky saw it as “a fat woman and a man as individuals, not instances of a general system. He once exerted intense effort to memorize a vast table of numeric sequences, failing to notice that it followed a rule of such simplicity that a child could reproduce it ad infinitum, because each line simply started with a higher integer than the previous one.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e For Luria it soon became clear that Shereshevsky’s remarkable ability came with an equal disability. He lived in a world of particulars, “rich in imagery, thematic elaboration, and effect,” but also “peculiarly lacking in one important feature: the capacity to convert encounters with the particular into instances of the general.” To understand the intended meaning of a normal sentence, Shereshevsky had to overcome his sensual experience of how a word sounded here and now; he had to forget his immersion in the present and connect to a different moment in space and time, an endeavor that would at times prove impossible.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In truth, he struggled mightily with the very aspect of language that makes it function in human communication and knowledge. Even our most common expressions contain words that we use figuratively, or that have different meanings in different situations. A nightmare for Shereshevsky. The simple act of “catching a cab” would present him with a barrage of possible interpretations to contend with. As he would later explain to Luria, the word \u003ci\u003eekipazh \u003c\/i\u003emeans “cab,” but it also means “the crew of a ship.” To understand the one meaning, he had to “picture for myself not just a driver in the cab but an entire staff manning it. That’s the only way I can make sense of it.” Living in a world of particulars, being constantly bathed in the immediate, makes communication a difficult affair. Language loses its ability to connect two disparate agents, to translate the experience of the one into the context of the other. But more than just a stumbling block for understanding what others were saying to him, in Shereshevsky’s world, as the neuroscientist Jerome Bruner would later put it, “elements and features can be isolated, but  a ‘whole’ or meaningful picture cannot be put together.” Indeed, it seems that the more perfect Shereshevsky’s extraordinary memory, the less he had a coherent self who could remember.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e For a brief time, Shereshevsky’s feats brought him fame and a sustainable existence. But even as stories of the man who couldn’t forget seeped into the outside world, life behind Stalin’s iron curtain was getting harder, especially for Jews like Luria and Shereshevsky. After the war, as Stalin consolidated his power through “anti-cosmopolitan” purges, Luria lost his position for a time and took to keeping a bag packed in case the authorities came for him in the night. Shereshevsky, who had refused to lend his talents to the secret police, found himself followed and harassed, his performances interrupted, and his career eventually ruined.  Luria would regain his footing and become one of the preeminent neuropsychologists of the twentieth century, his analysis of Shereshevsky a profound influence for later scientists like Jerome Bruner and Oliver Sacks. Shereshevsky, for his part, learned another way of erasing or at least dampening the remembered and perceived sensorium that had become his prison house. He started drinking heavily and died in obscurity a few years later.","brand":"Pantheon","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303065178341,"sku":"NP9780593316306","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593316306.jpg?v=1767741244","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-rigor-of-angels-isbn-9780593316306","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}