BEATRICERSS button
introducing readers to writers since 1995

February 27, 2004

"Being and Nothingness" Makes Perfect Sense in Physics,
n'est-ce pas?

by Ron Hogan

If only I'd been more diligent in keeping up with The Morning News, I could've told you about Robert Birnbaum's interview with Brian Greene the same day I considered Maslin's review of The Fabric of the Cosmos. But I'm just happy to steer you towards the review, which reveals, among other gems, the influence Camus had on Greene's scientific mind:

I don’t think that science changes values per se, by any means. So that isn’t an argument that I’d want to make. An argument that I would make is that an understanding of science and physics, in particular, places everyday experience in a completely different, unfamiliar, very, very rich context. When you learn that there may be more than three dimensions in space. When you learn that time is not what your intuition leads you to believe. That different people moving in different ways are experiencing different gravity fields, that time elapses at a different rate – when you learn these different features of the universe, it changes your perspective on what it means to be alive. What it means to be part of the universe, since the whole notion of universe is so beyond what experience would lead you to believe. And that’s the sense in which I find that this kind of knowledge has an impact on what it is that you do.

(And, yes, I know the difference between Camus and Sartre, thank you, but it's the best existentialist physics quip I could generate.)

Comments
If you enjoy this blog,
your PayPal donation
can contribute towards its ongoing publication.