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The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
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.
Argentine 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.
Through 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 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.
As each of these thinkers shows, every one of us has a fundamentally incomplete picture of the world. But this is to be expected. Only as mortal, finite beings are we able to experience the world in all its richness and breathtaking majesty. We are stranded in a gulf of vast extremes, between the astronomical and the quantum, an abyss of freedom and absolute determinism, and it is in that center where we must make our home. A soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, The Rigor of Angels 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.
Argentine 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.
Through 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 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.
As each of these thinkers shows, every one of us has a fundamentally incomplete picture of the world. But this is to be expected. Only as mortal, finite beings are we able to experience the world in all its richness and breathtaking majesty. We are stranded in a gulf of vast extremes, between the astronomical and the quantum, an abyss of freedom and absolute determinism, and it is in that center where we must make our home. A soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, The Rigor of Angels 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.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published August 29, 2023
609 people are currently reading
7116 people want to read
About the author
William Egginton
22 books67 followersWilliam Egginton is a literary critic and philosopher. He has written extensively on a broad range of subjects, including theatricality, fictionality, literary criticism, psychoanalysis and ethics, religious moderation, and theories of mediation. William Egginton was born in Syracuse, New York in 1969. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 1999. His doctoral thesis, "Theatricality and Presence: a Phenomenology of Space and Spectacle in Early Modern France and Spain," was written under the direction of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. He currently resides with his wife, Bernadette Wegenstein, and their three children, in Baltimore, Maryland. William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at the Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches on Spanish and Latin American literature, literary theory, and the relation between literature and philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 253 reviews
December 22, 2023
Reality is a collective, hallucinated construct.
I don’t read much philosophy but I read lots, and have studied, quantum mechanics. The Rigor of Angels is a beautiful crossroads of three great thinkers, Kant, Borges and Heisenberg and their attempts to explain the inexplicable. What I mean is, when we dive down onto the quantum level and compare it to the macro level, the underpinnings of our assumptions about reality disappear. The more you study the expanse of the universe and down to the quantum level, any harmony about how reality is cobbled together makes absolutely no sense. On the quantum level, there are no “things” only probability wave forms that come into existence when we look at them. How can matter and the macro world, something to us that is tangible and immutable, be made of something that kind of is and isn’t there?
This is the paradox that has vexed many people, including Einstein and Schrodinger, ever since observations and mathematics of quantum mechanics happened. What the author does in this book is assert a central thesis: we cannot understand how to harmonize space and time because space and time are mental constructs we’ve created. Meaning, space and time don’t actually exist as an independent reality from us. It is the sheer fact that we are a continuous observer, connecting one moment to the next with memory and physical laws, that creates the concepts of space and time. It is impossible to understand or conceptualize nature or reality because then we would no longer be observers and we would become the very nature that we are trying to understand. We apply our own constructs of reality to what we observe and when we do this, we inevitably find what we call paradoxes. Basically our cognitive limitations put speed limits on our understanding of what we observe and when they don’t make sense, they become paradoxes.
Did I just make any sense? Not sure, but I’m going to go with it.
I think that is the essence of this book and it is really well done. I was very familiar with Heisenberg before this but not so much with Kant and not at all with Borges. Along with a very readable philosophy in this book you can find some nice personal accounts of these three men and the history surrounding their days. This was an excellent and thought provoking book.
I don’t read much philosophy but I read lots, and have studied, quantum mechanics. The Rigor of Angels is a beautiful crossroads of three great thinkers, Kant, Borges and Heisenberg and their attempts to explain the inexplicable. What I mean is, when we dive down onto the quantum level and compare it to the macro level, the underpinnings of our assumptions about reality disappear. The more you study the expanse of the universe and down to the quantum level, any harmony about how reality is cobbled together makes absolutely no sense. On the quantum level, there are no “things” only probability wave forms that come into existence when we look at them. How can matter and the macro world, something to us that is tangible and immutable, be made of something that kind of is and isn’t there?
This is the paradox that has vexed many people, including Einstein and Schrodinger, ever since observations and mathematics of quantum mechanics happened. What the author does in this book is assert a central thesis: we cannot understand how to harmonize space and time because space and time are mental constructs we’ve created. Meaning, space and time don’t actually exist as an independent reality from us. It is the sheer fact that we are a continuous observer, connecting one moment to the next with memory and physical laws, that creates the concepts of space and time. It is impossible to understand or conceptualize nature or reality because then we would no longer be observers and we would become the very nature that we are trying to understand. We apply our own constructs of reality to what we observe and when we do this, we inevitably find what we call paradoxes. Basically our cognitive limitations put speed limits on our understanding of what we observe and when they don’t make sense, they become paradoxes.
Did I just make any sense? Not sure, but I’m going to go with it.
I think that is the essence of this book and it is really well done. I was very familiar with Heisenberg before this but not so much with Kant and not at all with Borges. Along with a very readable philosophy in this book you can find some nice personal accounts of these three men and the history surrounding their days. This was an excellent and thought provoking book.
February 2, 2024
This is what we read for. A romp through ideas, with Egginton aiming to come at the following 4 questions:
- Are space and time infinitely divisible, or are they composed of indivisible chunks?
- Is there something like a supreme and unconditional being, or is everything in existence conditioned and affected by something else?
- Is there a spatial or temporal edge to the universe, or does it extend infinitely with no beginning or border?
- Are we free to choose our path in life, or is our every choice determined by the physical world we live in?
He does this by tossing the philosophical hot potato back and forth among Heisenberg, Kant, and Borges. And every single chapter is top notch.
Also, as an aside, this might be one of the most lucid recountings of an overly simplified vision of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, at least in parts. I think that takes some form of mastery over the topic. Even Roger Scruton’s attempt at a simplified introduction to Kant’s ideas in Kant: A Very Short Introduction hits you with hurdles, but I suppose that is what happens when you zoom in. Egginton shows you that it’s really all about “the capacity to convert encounters with the particular into instances of the general”.
Thanks to Goatboy for the nod on this one.
- Are space and time infinitely divisible, or are they composed of indivisible chunks?
- Is there something like a supreme and unconditional being, or is everything in existence conditioned and affected by something else?
- Is there a spatial or temporal edge to the universe, or does it extend infinitely with no beginning or border?
- Are we free to choose our path in life, or is our every choice determined by the physical world we live in?
He does this by tossing the philosophical hot potato back and forth among Heisenberg, Kant, and Borges. And every single chapter is top notch.
Also, as an aside, this might be one of the most lucid recountings of an overly simplified vision of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, at least in parts. I think that takes some form of mastery over the topic. Even Roger Scruton’s attempt at a simplified introduction to Kant’s ideas in Kant: A Very Short Introduction hits you with hurdles, but I suppose that is what happens when you zoom in. Egginton shows you that it’s really all about “the capacity to convert encounters with the particular into instances of the general”.
Thanks to Goatboy for the nod on this one.
October 9, 2023
There is no preferred viewpoint for observing the world around us. When everything about the present is known, nothing about the context, relations and meaning will be known. Beatrice’s (Dante’s muse) last smile happens because she is ready to enter the perfection of God’s Grace where change can’t happen while Dante must return to the world of change. The author notes that Dante seems to get the better deal, I tend to agree. A changeless universal reality would seem static to me.
Kant breaks the mode for all philosophy. He takes truth out of the universe by making it not ‘out there’, and entwines our understanding by acknowledging that space, time, and intuition are fundamental for understanding and meaning. Heisenberg realizes that we can only know what is revealed to us at one time, that position and momentum are not simultaneously knowable.
The author relies on Jorge Borges as he tells his story. That made me start to read the Borges’ book The Total Library: Non-fiction 1922-1986. There’s a lot of pleasant overlap between these two books. At the intersection of the infinite and reality there are paradoxes, or antinomies. Dante when he turns around, he sees everything and all time because just as for us moderns we know to see the big bang all one must do is stretch out your hand since the remnants for the creation of our universe is always at hand with only a now there is no past or future.
I found this book as one of the better newer books. The author never talks down to his readers. Nietzsche, Boethius, Augustine, Plotinus (it’s almost impossible to write an intelligent book without invoking Plotinus or his Enneads), Einstein, Hugh Everett III, and a host of other familiar characters are all mentioned in this book to great effect.
Kant breaks the mode for all philosophy. He takes truth out of the universe by making it not ‘out there’, and entwines our understanding by acknowledging that space, time, and intuition are fundamental for understanding and meaning. Heisenberg realizes that we can only know what is revealed to us at one time, that position and momentum are not simultaneously knowable.
The author relies on Jorge Borges as he tells his story. That made me start to read the Borges’ book The Total Library: Non-fiction 1922-1986. There’s a lot of pleasant overlap between these two books. At the intersection of the infinite and reality there are paradoxes, or antinomies. Dante when he turns around, he sees everything and all time because just as for us moderns we know to see the big bang all one must do is stretch out your hand since the remnants for the creation of our universe is always at hand with only a now there is no past or future.
I found this book as one of the better newer books. The author never talks down to his readers. Nietzsche, Boethius, Augustine, Plotinus (it’s almost impossible to write an intelligent book without invoking Plotinus or his Enneads), Einstein, Hugh Everett III, and a host of other familiar characters are all mentioned in this book to great effect.
October 30, 2023
The subject of this work is intriguing, and the confluence of these three thinkers is tantalizing. It promises metaphysical riches and at times, the text delivers. However, for the most part this is unfortunately less than the sum of its parts. While Egginton keeps up a well-paced roundelay between the three authors he examines, the analysis of each is repetitive and superficial. His fundamental point is that each points to the limits of our understanding as a grounding postulate for the possibility of knowledge. The very structure of reality that binds us (space, time, sequentiality) is what allows us to make sense of the world at all, and those categories are in some sense in us rather than out there. It's that loosening of the binding between objective reality and our grasp of it that Egginton finds in each thinker and that he tries to knit up into a unified lesson in the participatory universe.
That's all well and good and basically what you'd expect to pull out of these three. But I found Egginton's telling to be frustrating. He does great at the biographical detail, but the conceptual work leads him off the path into obscurantism. Rather than a careful stepwise ascent through an argument, this text prefers to leapfrog into increasingly strident denunciations of "the view from nowhere." Egginton is quick to declare that thoughts on ultimate things must founder on the rocks of an antinomy and are therefore beyond rational analysis. There's a real "gotcha!" tone, even though it doesn't always feel like he's done his homework to really police the boundaries of the sub specie aeternitatis option.
There's a lot of talk about inverting the view of the universe, the universe being a circle whose center is everywhere, etc., etc. One could discern much passion but precious little sense in these accounts. While I get where he's coming from, the details of his approach remained quite murky. I found his explanations of quantum physics muddled, even more so than is typical, and his account of Kant's philosophy reductive. Egginton tells us repeatedly how Kant was considered an intellectual superstar in his day, but he struggles to paint a clear picture of why that was so.
Egginton's account of Borges fares a little better, perhaps because he finds more emotional hooks in the pathos of spurned lovers and frustrated professional ambitions. He really only focuses on a small selection of Borges' stories, but the descriptions of the Argentinian literary scene are vivid. I also enjoyed the parts on Heisenberg's fate as the war ended and his subsequent role in the debates over nuclear weapons.
Overall, I expected to love but merely liked this book. A clearer writer could have better limned the aporia, but Egginton left me feeling like he didn't really understand what he couldn't understand, ya know? Many superior books exist that help explain the disorienting groundlessness of modern man, poised above a quantum abyss in a universe that will always escape ultimate epistemic closure. There are excellent bits in this one but it fails to reach the exalted heights it sets as its aim.
That's all well and good and basically what you'd expect to pull out of these three. But I found Egginton's telling to be frustrating. He does great at the biographical detail, but the conceptual work leads him off the path into obscurantism. Rather than a careful stepwise ascent through an argument, this text prefers to leapfrog into increasingly strident denunciations of "the view from nowhere." Egginton is quick to declare that thoughts on ultimate things must founder on the rocks of an antinomy and are therefore beyond rational analysis. There's a real "gotcha!" tone, even though it doesn't always feel like he's done his homework to really police the boundaries of the sub specie aeternitatis option.
There's a lot of talk about inverting the view of the universe, the universe being a circle whose center is everywhere, etc., etc. One could discern much passion but precious little sense in these accounts. While I get where he's coming from, the details of his approach remained quite murky. I found his explanations of quantum physics muddled, even more so than is typical, and his account of Kant's philosophy reductive. Egginton tells us repeatedly how Kant was considered an intellectual superstar in his day, but he struggles to paint a clear picture of why that was so.
Egginton's account of Borges fares a little better, perhaps because he finds more emotional hooks in the pathos of spurned lovers and frustrated professional ambitions. He really only focuses on a small selection of Borges' stories, but the descriptions of the Argentinian literary scene are vivid. I also enjoyed the parts on Heisenberg's fate as the war ended and his subsequent role in the debates over nuclear weapons.
Overall, I expected to love but merely liked this book. A clearer writer could have better limned the aporia, but Egginton left me feeling like he didn't really understand what he couldn't understand, ya know? Many superior books exist that help explain the disorienting groundlessness of modern man, poised above a quantum abyss in a universe that will always escape ultimate epistemic closure. There are excellent bits in this one but it fails to reach the exalted heights it sets as its aim.
April 3, 2024
A fantastic look at the paradoxes created out of the rise of quantum mechanics. Or perhaps it is better to say that Egginton's book illustrates the paradoxes of our concept of reality as evidenced by the developments in quantum mechanics. Thematically complex, yes. But Egginton is a wonderful writer and thus every time my head started to swim, his prose brought me back on course. That is not to say that his writing allows for us to understand everything that is being presented. That is, of course, nonsense. You will re-read passages constantly. But Egginton does allow us to keep from feeling overwhelmed. I do not recommend listening to this on audio book though, for the simple reason that you will be rewinding the tape regularly.
Other aspects to appreciate about the book are the biographies of the three men mentioned in the title. All are interesting individually and their accomplishments professionally warrant study. We also get to see the roles of other titans such as Einstein, Shrodinger, Boethius and Dante.
A passage that I think sums up the gist of the book:
"What Borges's stories, Heisenberg's discovery, and Kant's system all reveal is that the assumption underlying this fantasy, the full coincidence of knowing and being, self-destructs on closer examination. On the one hand, to measure something is to differ from it in some minimal but irreducible way, and hence the very condition of knowing anything about the world demolishes the possibility of doing so perfectly. On the other hand, full presence, being truly and completely a part of the flow, requires eradicating such difference and hence makes knowledge impossible. One can imagine knowing or one can imagine being identical with the world, but only at the cost of knowing it. Like what Heisenberg's most famous principle revealed about momentum and place, we can't have both."
I will read this again. Five stars.
Other aspects to appreciate about the book are the biographies of the three men mentioned in the title. All are interesting individually and their accomplishments professionally warrant study. We also get to see the roles of other titans such as Einstein, Shrodinger, Boethius and Dante.
A passage that I think sums up the gist of the book:
"What Borges's stories, Heisenberg's discovery, and Kant's system all reveal is that the assumption underlying this fantasy, the full coincidence of knowing and being, self-destructs on closer examination. On the one hand, to measure something is to differ from it in some minimal but irreducible way, and hence the very condition of knowing anything about the world demolishes the possibility of doing so perfectly. On the other hand, full presence, being truly and completely a part of the flow, requires eradicating such difference and hence makes knowledge impossible. One can imagine knowing or one can imagine being identical with the world, but only at the cost of knowing it. Like what Heisenberg's most famous principle revealed about momentum and place, we can't have both."
I will read this again. Five stars.
August 24, 2023
The Rigor of Angels is a deep-dive into some of the most intense philosophical questions through the avenues of three historical figures, the physicist Werner Heisenberg, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The core of the book is the fact that, as Kant says, space and time, which we take as facts of reality, are the conditions of the possibility of experience, rather than things-in-themselves that exist outside of us. Egginton takes the reader through various paradoxes that seem utterly unsolveable which arise from the issue of taking space and time to be universal things, or from misapplication of a kind of 'God's-eye view' of the universe. One of the great beauties of the book is seeing the way philosophical ideas return again and again in different forms, and how some of the greatest problems that Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant faced were different faces of the same issues. Egginton's writing is clear and concise through even some extraordinarily complicated topics, and his willingness to use analogy and to refresh the reader at various points is very helpful. The book is dense but I found it very rewarding.
June 13, 2024
Imagine if you will.
Trying to write an intelligible book about either: (1) Kant, or (2) Borges, or (3) Heisenberg.
Just trying to understand, let alone write about any of those figures (and their work) alone could destroy your life.
But now, just imagine writing about all 3.
And tying ALL of their lives and work together.
And making it seem TOTALLY natural and apparent.
Easy almost.
Well.
That’s what Eggington does here.
And I can’t EVER.
I picked this one up out of desperation.
I have been reading and writing a lot of books in my field (psychology) and writing an absolutely SOUL GRINDING dissertation.
And.
I just needed a BIG THINK book.
I needed to ZOOM OUT.
And this one NAILED it.
Absolutely brilliant.
I won’t try to summarize it here.
But suffice it to say.
It’s a really good one of these.
Very gratifying.
Very humbling.
Very perspective shifting.
It will make you believe in the power of the humanities again.
And it will 10X your reading wish list.
SMASHING!
5/5 - Stars ✨
Trying to write an intelligible book about either: (1) Kant, or (2) Borges, or (3) Heisenberg.
Just trying to understand, let alone write about any of those figures (and their work) alone could destroy your life.
But now, just imagine writing about all 3.
And tying ALL of their lives and work together.
And making it seem TOTALLY natural and apparent.
Easy almost.
Well.
That’s what Eggington does here.
And I can’t EVER.
I picked this one up out of desperation.
I have been reading and writing a lot of books in my field (psychology) and writing an absolutely SOUL GRINDING dissertation.
And.
I just needed a BIG THINK book.
I needed to ZOOM OUT.
And this one NAILED it.
Absolutely brilliant.
I won’t try to summarize it here.
But suffice it to say.
It’s a really good one of these.
Very gratifying.
Very humbling.
Very perspective shifting.
It will make you believe in the power of the humanities again.
And it will 10X your reading wish list.
SMASHING!
5/5 - Stars ✨
April 20, 2024
Years ago as a young college student, I was dazzled by the questions and problems of philosophy—which were introduced to me by the likes of Plato, Bertrand Russell, and Erich Fromm, among others—and I ended up falling hard for it. The Rigor of Angels is a book that takes me back to that heady, blissful, mind-expanding time.
The book sets out to examine how we perceive reality, with lessons drawn from the viewpoints of three great thinkers: the physicist Werner Heisenberg, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The fascinating discussion herein ranges from physics (general and special relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology), to metaphysics, epistemology, free will vs. determinism, morality, aesthetics, artistic criticism, literature, and history.
It’s really quite amazing how much Egginton is able to densely pack in and tie together in a mere 300+ pages of text, and without ever drifting into abstruseness. The writing is quite lucid considering the complexity of the issues, a most impressive feat of skill.
Among the primary conclusions of the book: We cannot truly know nature, but only nature exposed to our methods of questioning. And, much of our befuddlement about our existence and the universe is due to our conflation of our observations of the workings of nature and our expectations of how we think things ought to work. Often, the twain do not meet… quantum mechanics is a perfect example.
In sum, this book is an absolute gem brimming with philosophical insight and mind-bending ideas—the best read of 2024 so far—5 resounding stars. Highest recommendation for fans of philosophy & science.
The book sets out to examine how we perceive reality, with lessons drawn from the viewpoints of three great thinkers: the physicist Werner Heisenberg, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The fascinating discussion herein ranges from physics (general and special relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology), to metaphysics, epistemology, free will vs. determinism, morality, aesthetics, artistic criticism, literature, and history.
It’s really quite amazing how much Egginton is able to densely pack in and tie together in a mere 300+ pages of text, and without ever drifting into abstruseness. The writing is quite lucid considering the complexity of the issues, a most impressive feat of skill.
Among the primary conclusions of the book: We cannot truly know nature, but only nature exposed to our methods of questioning. And, much of our befuddlement about our existence and the universe is due to our conflation of our observations of the workings of nature and our expectations of how we think things ought to work. Often, the twain do not meet… quantum mechanics is a perfect example.
In sum, this book is an absolute gem brimming with philosophical insight and mind-bending ideas—the best read of 2024 so far—5 resounding stars. Highest recommendation for fans of philosophy & science.
February 4, 2024
This was a humbling experience to say the least. Egginton gives a poetically beautiful view from perspectives of three geniuses showing how limited human mind is in understanding the nature of reality and free will. It is not just Heisenberg’s uncertainty, Kant’s antinomies or Borges’ mind bending Alef and Labyrinths, but Rigor of Angels picks brains of great thinkers millenniums apart and proves fundamental incompleteness of our understanding. It may not be rigorous enough for the experts of field but certainly a great reminder for intellectual humility. I will revisit after reading more of Borges and other classics.
December 31, 2024
I finished my second reading of this book about a month ago and because it’s the ending year I will write a few words hoping to come back later. It started with Bohr and Heisenberg unable to locate electrons precisely on the orbital rings around the nucleus. Currently we understand an electron’s location around a nucleus as simply the likelihood it would be at a specific point or the probability of the electron being at a specific location. Then Heisenberg proposes the uncertainty principle explaining that when a particle’s momentum was determined, its location becomes harder to pin down. Heisenberg then theorized that sometimes when a particle was measured, the act of measuring itself influences the outcome of the test. The philosopher Kant, of course, explained this observer effect a 100 years before. Finally we get the explanation of quantum entanglement. With a pair of photons in a quantum entanglement, when the spin of one photon was altered, the second photon, its quantum pair, instantly changes to the opposite spin. Yes indeed, Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”.
January 24, 2024
I liked this a lot: the intertwining of the three main figures and their time periods and their work - it didn't feel normal to jump around in time so much and that was unsettling - in a good way. I've read so many books over the years on the quantum revolution, but this book really made me think about "reality" and free will in a new way.
March 31, 2024
An interesting and mind expanding read, and I give a thank you to some GR friends who highlighted it to me. A good time for me to read it while my wits are still capable of following the themes it raised.
Knowing it would touch on something as profound as the ‘Nature of Reality’ (whatever that might be) I, of course, approached it with preconceptions - I had strong opinions, having been involved with science and technology all my life, and been interested in the background basics and the philosophy underlying science.
Fortunately the book is well enough written, covering a wide enough ground, that I soon forgot my preconceptions and just enjoyed the ideas thrown at me, and learnt something, I think.
A core feature of the book’s structure is to compare some relevant views of three key people on how they perceived reality, Nature, the physical world about us. The three selected are a quantum physicist, Werner Heisenburg; a classical philosopher, Immanuel Kant; a literary giant, Jorge Luis Borges. The author tries to show some similarities they had in viewing the world; basically, how we’re so immersed in it, such that we can’t easily define a separate reality from our perception of it.
He did a pretty good job using that approach as it’s the core of Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics, and consciously so for Heisenburg who had an interest in the meaning of his work and had familiarity with Kant. His jousts with Einstein, who had his more traditional views, are particularly interesting.
It’s also a key part of Kant’s philosophy, from his thoughts on how we relate to the world (“Critique of Pure Reason”).
However, I know little of Jorge Luis Borges and his output to know whether he focussed on Reality as much in his work, though the author here does fill us in on some of his life events and literary works to suggest he did. Given that Borges’s view on the nature of reality is the least discussed of the three I did wonder whether he’d been included just to give a literary balance to the science and pure philosophy components - any author of Borges’ acclaim is bound to have considered such a theme, on our relationship to reality, at some point but was it important to his outlook, as it was for the other two? I don’t know…
Aside from my suspicions about the choice of the three characters used to drive the narrative I found myself generally agreeing with the main thrust of the argument presented here. That we are so immersed in the world, how we experience it through our senses, that we frequently get onto dangerous ground when we try to view the world from some abstract outside position. We communicate by language, and we think, reason even, with those same words, which are themselves shaped by the everyday world we live in. I’m amazed at how far our primate brains and the language we’ve created has allowed us to develop models of the world, especially in the sciences and supported with mathematics, itself a more formal descriptive language we’ve also created.
Tackled head on, and a key theme in the book, are the apparent confusions or paradoxes arising from Heisenberg’s Quantum Mechanics description of the sub atomic world. In short, the author says these are paradoxes only because we insist on imposing our macro worldview, on objects far away from our everyday experience. Our language is not that effective in describing what we find. Mathematics, our more abstract language, does somewhat better and gives us excellent predictions of many processes that experiments can access. But there’s a limit to the understanding even from Mathematics’ success - I did a Physics degree in my youth, got good scores in my Quantum Mechanics course (I could manipulate the required equations effectively) but only in later decades did I realise my lack of philosophical understanding. For example, I’ve no idea what a ‘wave function’ in Schrodinger’s Equation actually is, other than the ultimate abstraction we use to describe quantum mechanical objects. I once, not so many years ago, realised I hadn’t even understood the full implications of the famous Schrodinger’s Cat example.
As the author notes, Nature happily goes its own way, behaving in the same manner when key experiments are done such as the critical ones with ‘two slits’ or entanglement/Bells Theorem, despite us often throwing our hands up in surprise at the results, or even calling them paradoxical. When this situation arises it’s valid to step back and question whether the rules we are attempting to impose on nature, even what we define as space and time in our macro world, are relevant here and the source of the problem.
I don’t think the author goes as far as ‘just accept what we come across as it is and don’t try to impose an understanding on it’, he does accept there is something objective out there, but I thought he came close once or twice. For example, in attempting to understand why the universe seems to be just right to support our conscious existence then, for me, the Multiverse option is a reasonable model, and I think distinct and preferable to an Intelligent Design option despite the author giving them an equivalent status - although I accept it does require some physical evidence else it remains an unproven theory! But with a bit more foundation than pure speculation.
I’m getting long winded but that shows how absorbing I found it. I was very interested in his discussion of Free Will, too detailed to go into here, but it maybe resolved some points for me.
Not an easy read because it makes you think! I needed to reflect on and reread some sections (reality is catching up on my synapse responses, it seems).
Recommended if you want a thought provoking view on humanity’s relationship with what we call the real world.
Also some interesting background biography on Heisenburg and Kant which I lacked, though a bit less on Borges.
Knowing it would touch on something as profound as the ‘Nature of Reality’ (whatever that might be) I, of course, approached it with preconceptions - I had strong opinions, having been involved with science and technology all my life, and been interested in the background basics and the philosophy underlying science.
Fortunately the book is well enough written, covering a wide enough ground, that I soon forgot my preconceptions and just enjoyed the ideas thrown at me, and learnt something, I think.
A core feature of the book’s structure is to compare some relevant views of three key people on how they perceived reality, Nature, the physical world about us. The three selected are a quantum physicist, Werner Heisenburg; a classical philosopher, Immanuel Kant; a literary giant, Jorge Luis Borges. The author tries to show some similarities they had in viewing the world; basically, how we’re so immersed in it, such that we can’t easily define a separate reality from our perception of it.
He did a pretty good job using that approach as it’s the core of Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics, and consciously so for Heisenburg who had an interest in the meaning of his work and had familiarity with Kant. His jousts with Einstein, who had his more traditional views, are particularly interesting.
It’s also a key part of Kant’s philosophy, from his thoughts on how we relate to the world (“Critique of Pure Reason”).
However, I know little of Jorge Luis Borges and his output to know whether he focussed on Reality as much in his work, though the author here does fill us in on some of his life events and literary works to suggest he did. Given that Borges’s view on the nature of reality is the least discussed of the three I did wonder whether he’d been included just to give a literary balance to the science and pure philosophy components - any author of Borges’ acclaim is bound to have considered such a theme, on our relationship to reality, at some point but was it important to his outlook, as it was for the other two? I don’t know…
Aside from my suspicions about the choice of the three characters used to drive the narrative I found myself generally agreeing with the main thrust of the argument presented here. That we are so immersed in the world, how we experience it through our senses, that we frequently get onto dangerous ground when we try to view the world from some abstract outside position. We communicate by language, and we think, reason even, with those same words, which are themselves shaped by the everyday world we live in. I’m amazed at how far our primate brains and the language we’ve created has allowed us to develop models of the world, especially in the sciences and supported with mathematics, itself a more formal descriptive language we’ve also created.
Tackled head on, and a key theme in the book, are the apparent confusions or paradoxes arising from Heisenberg’s Quantum Mechanics description of the sub atomic world. In short, the author says these are paradoxes only because we insist on imposing our macro worldview, on objects far away from our everyday experience. Our language is not that effective in describing what we find. Mathematics, our more abstract language, does somewhat better and gives us excellent predictions of many processes that experiments can access. But there’s a limit to the understanding even from Mathematics’ success - I did a Physics degree in my youth, got good scores in my Quantum Mechanics course (I could manipulate the required equations effectively) but only in later decades did I realise my lack of philosophical understanding. For example, I’ve no idea what a ‘wave function’ in Schrodinger’s Equation actually is, other than the ultimate abstraction we use to describe quantum mechanical objects. I once, not so many years ago, realised I hadn’t even understood the full implications of the famous Schrodinger’s Cat example.
As the author notes, Nature happily goes its own way, behaving in the same manner when key experiments are done such as the critical ones with ‘two slits’ or entanglement/Bells Theorem, despite us often throwing our hands up in surprise at the results, or even calling them paradoxical. When this situation arises it’s valid to step back and question whether the rules we are attempting to impose on nature, even what we define as space and time in our macro world, are relevant here and the source of the problem.
I don’t think the author goes as far as ‘just accept what we come across as it is and don’t try to impose an understanding on it’, he does accept there is something objective out there, but I thought he came close once or twice. For example, in attempting to understand why the universe seems to be just right to support our conscious existence then, for me, the Multiverse option is a reasonable model, and I think distinct and preferable to an Intelligent Design option despite the author giving them an equivalent status - although I accept it does require some physical evidence else it remains an unproven theory! But with a bit more foundation than pure speculation.
I’m getting long winded but that shows how absorbing I found it. I was very interested in his discussion of Free Will, too detailed to go into here, but it maybe resolved some points for me.
Not an easy read because it makes you think! I needed to reflect on and reread some sections (reality is catching up on my synapse responses, it seems).
Recommended if you want a thought provoking view on humanity’s relationship with what we call the real world.
Also some interesting background biography on Heisenburg and Kant which I lacked, though a bit less on Borges.
November 27, 2023
There are few books in the world that open your eyes and mind to radically new ways of seeing. They’ll make you question reality and confuse you but also provide turn posts from which you can start to glimpse a new rigor to the world. And your life after reading those books will never be the same as before. You will not see the world the same way again. This is one such book.
Want to read
September 1, 2023described as "challenging", uh oh. But I'm familiar, to varying degrees, with the three principles, so maybe. And I like the interplay between disciplines.
see also Gleiser's interview w author https://bigthink.com/13-8/william-egg...
see also Gleiser's interview w author https://bigthink.com/13-8/william-egg...
November 16, 2024
Quantum theory for the moderately thick i.e. me, but there’s also a lot more to this book. There are several points in this where the connection between the three life stories (and their relevance to understanding the quantum universe) hit me with perfect timing, like the moment of understanding that unfolds just ahead of the protagonist’s own revelation in the best fiction. That there was then a chapter that discussed this very phenomenon felt very neat and intentional and satisfying. This book really won’t be for everyone, but I thought it was fantastic.
Read
July 16, 2024Pretty crazy how after thousands of years of human thought we are still just figuring out what the heck space and time is.
March 4, 2025
Phenomenal.
September 24, 2024
Physics not surprisingly is a science directly addressing the structures of matter and the lively interactions between parts of the universe that we can observe. When we are presented with the question why a thing functions as its does, this falls into the realm of physics. And it's there which we probe to find a soothing, warm, and fuzzy answer to this banal question that appeared to be the color of honey in the certain brain of a researcher.
"He knew the forms of clouds in the southern sky on the morning of April 30, 1982, and he could compare them in his memory with the veins in the marbled binding of a book he had seen only once, or with the feathers of spray lifted by a oar on the Rio Negro on the eve of the Battle of Quebracho.
—William Egginton"
We cannot neglect that the principles of observation and interaction are substantive to what we deem as reality. We observe such functions by standing on a wet deck of reality, planted firmly on a wooden base situated twixt the astronomical and the quantum and armed with the mind of scientist.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2023
I want the world to know that this book probably deserves more stars than I gave it. It’s just that it hurt my brain to read it. I had to let some of the physics roll on past me and then try real hard to understand the rest. Honestly, it was kind of fun even if it taxed my brain. Deep thinking is good for the soul.
August 23, 2024
I followed up my Jorge Luis Borgesreading with this book. It was a tough one. I vaguely remember reading Kant in college and a smattering in grad school. Heisenberg is really beyond me. Yet this was an enjoyable book. I felt, at times, not dissimilar to a Borges character reaching the Kantian limits of what we can know about the universe: or Heisenberg, perhaps channeling Wittgenstein, "About the ultimate things we cannot speak."
The Rigor of Angels is a dense look at how we perceive reality. Kant acts as the foundation, providing a rigorous theory attempting to prove that there is a world that exists outside our perceptions. Borges provides the artistic/metaphoric riff on the theme. Heisenberg is the agent of chaos, absolutely subverting any sense that we can know the reality of the universe.
Egginton does an admirable job of taking some of the most abstruse of human thinking and translating it into language that is (somewhat) approachable for the layman. Thank god for me knowing Borges pretty well because I leaned on those parts of the book to help me understand the other two thirds. Egginton sprinkles in biography amidst the philosophy and physics; consider it sauce for the dish. It helps a lowly reader like myself feel I haven't strayed too far into the woods.
Wade into the text at your peril. Selections from the table of contents will give you an idea of what you are up against:
"5. Sub Specie Aeternitatis: Back in Prussia, Kant asks what knowledge would be like for an omniscient being, and we are transported to the warring factions of early Christianity."
"8. Gravitas: Heisenberg's conversations with Einstein reveal an underlying reconciliation between relativity and quantum mechanics in a vision of the cosmos foreseen by Dante."
"11. Forking Paths: The physicist Hugh Everett has the wild idea that new universes are birthed continuously, and Borges explores the same idea in a spy story."
The Rigor of Angels is a dense look at how we perceive reality. Kant acts as the foundation, providing a rigorous theory attempting to prove that there is a world that exists outside our perceptions. Borges provides the artistic/metaphoric riff on the theme. Heisenberg is the agent of chaos, absolutely subverting any sense that we can know the reality of the universe.
Egginton does an admirable job of taking some of the most abstruse of human thinking and translating it into language that is (somewhat) approachable for the layman. Thank god for me knowing Borges pretty well because I leaned on those parts of the book to help me understand the other two thirds. Egginton sprinkles in biography amidst the philosophy and physics; consider it sauce for the dish. It helps a lowly reader like myself feel I haven't strayed too far into the woods.
Wade into the text at your peril. Selections from the table of contents will give you an idea of what you are up against:
"5. Sub Specie Aeternitatis: Back in Prussia, Kant asks what knowledge would be like for an omniscient being, and we are transported to the warring factions of early Christianity."
"8. Gravitas: Heisenberg's conversations with Einstein reveal an underlying reconciliation between relativity and quantum mechanics in a vision of the cosmos foreseen by Dante."
"11. Forking Paths: The physicist Hugh Everett has the wild idea that new universes are birthed continuously, and Borges explores the same idea in a spy story."
May 14, 2024
wowowowowoow. this book takes on extremely data heavy, scientific & philosophical concepts. how can a philosopher, a poet, and a scientist explain how they believe the world works? what if, throughout the reading you discover that their completely different backgrounds can lead them to similar conclusions?
"an observation, any observation, undermines perfect being in the present, because the observation itself brings space and time into the picture. a fundamental particle captured in a singular moment of space-time is thus, by definition, unperceivable and 'absolute unity', an infinitely thin sliver of space-time, with no before or after"- immanuel kant
egginton has a way of dissecting daunting theories in a way that is digestible and easy to understand for the reader. it was extremely interesting to learn about the personal histories and works of Kant, Borges, and Heisenberg.
"far from grasping the universe as a transparent whole, we are blind, groping seekers adrift in time and space. as such, free will isn't a metaphysical implant or delusion of grandeur but an admission of our fallibility in the face of an unknowable future"
how much of the universe can be explained by what you can see? and how much by what we can't? how far does free will extend? how does it feel to find out science operates largely in a paradox with itself?
"we ultimately realize what we are surviving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves"
"an observation, any observation, undermines perfect being in the present, because the observation itself brings space and time into the picture. a fundamental particle captured in a singular moment of space-time is thus, by definition, unperceivable and 'absolute unity', an infinitely thin sliver of space-time, with no before or after"- immanuel kant
egginton has a way of dissecting daunting theories in a way that is digestible and easy to understand for the reader. it was extremely interesting to learn about the personal histories and works of Kant, Borges, and Heisenberg.
"far from grasping the universe as a transparent whole, we are blind, groping seekers adrift in time and space. as such, free will isn't a metaphysical implant or delusion of grandeur but an admission of our fallibility in the face of an unknowable future"
how much of the universe can be explained by what you can see? and how much by what we can't? how far does free will extend? how does it feel to find out science operates largely in a paradox with itself?
"we ultimately realize what we are surviving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves"
November 18, 2023
Absorbing and thought-provoking. I did not understand some large parts of it, but the writing was very beautiful. Amazing that a humanities professor could write so interestingly about quantum mechanics (and I assume accurately, given the positive blurbs from respectable physicists). I learned a lot about Borges, Kant, and Heisenberg and it was truly astonishing the intellectual linkages that could be demonstrated among them.
December 10, 2024
Absolutely brilliant. A lot of it beyond my understanding but fascinating, illuminating; sometimes pleasantly logical, sometimes “laugh out loud” baffling but always an enjoyable challenge and experience.
March 17, 2024
A mind-expanding look into some of the deepest questions regarding free will, the nature of space and time, and our limitations as observers stuck inside those constructs. Discussions on these topics are interwoven with relevant stories and anecdotes from the lives of Kant, Borges, and Heisenberg, and by the book's end I was convinced that their philosophies had more in common with each other than different. The book could get a bit pompous in the writing sometimes but was otherwise an excellent and interesting read.
December 20, 2024
Do you remember when Firesign Theatre asked this timeless question: “How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?” Once before I quoted Firesign’s question in a Goodreads review of a book on quantum non-locality, and my head is similarly spinning now.
I have an inkling that this book by William Egginton might be one of the best books I have ever read. That may be saying a lot, but it is not saying that I understood it; far from it. This book is about what lies at the intersection of Kant’s epistemology, Heisenberg’s quantum physics, and Borges’s imagination, which is to say it’s sort of about what lies through the looking glass. As I write that, I am reminded of a passage in which Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky was appropriately quoted and that what I love most about this book, and about many books, is the feeling of vertigo I get when my mind is twisted beyond all reckoning. That could be why it may be one of the best books I’ve ever read: because it induces a very powerful vertigo.
The book concerns profound implications of quantum uncertainty and the impossibility of having a place of privileged observation within the universe, such as an "edge" of the universe or anyplace corresponding to a "center." Egginton makes a point of saying (I think), we can read Borges, or Dante, for a glimmer of truth concerning a center, “an infinitesimal point of origin of space and time that envelops all of creation,” but, when we gaze outward at the horizon, we must realize we are gazing inward all along. When we look out to find the edge of the cosmos, no matter what direction we gaze, we are looking at the center instead. The center is everywhere, and the edge is nowhere.
I am tempted to say, “this book is not for everyone,” and I guess it’s not, but that might imply that it is not for readers who do not understand, and that would mean it’s not for me. I loved it, and I’m going to read it again and hope to understand it better. That reminds me of the old saw that defines madness as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So, if you’re mad like me, I highly recommend it. You’ll love it.
I have an inkling that this book by William Egginton might be one of the best books I have ever read. That may be saying a lot, but it is not saying that I understood it; far from it. This book is about what lies at the intersection of Kant’s epistemology, Heisenberg’s quantum physics, and Borges’s imagination, which is to say it’s sort of about what lies through the looking glass. As I write that, I am reminded of a passage in which Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky was appropriately quoted and that what I love most about this book, and about many books, is the feeling of vertigo I get when my mind is twisted beyond all reckoning. That could be why it may be one of the best books I’ve ever read: because it induces a very powerful vertigo.
The book concerns profound implications of quantum uncertainty and the impossibility of having a place of privileged observation within the universe, such as an "edge" of the universe or anyplace corresponding to a "center." Egginton makes a point of saying (I think), we can read Borges, or Dante, for a glimmer of truth concerning a center, “an infinitesimal point of origin of space and time that envelops all of creation,” but, when we gaze outward at the horizon, we must realize we are gazing inward all along. When we look out to find the edge of the cosmos, no matter what direction we gaze, we are looking at the center instead. The center is everywhere, and the edge is nowhere.
I am tempted to say, “this book is not for everyone,” and I guess it’s not, but that might imply that it is not for readers who do not understand, and that would mean it’s not for me. I loved it, and I’m going to read it again and hope to understand it better. That reminds me of the old saw that defines madness as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So, if you’re mad like me, I highly recommend it. You’ll love it.
January 24, 2024
In so many words this piece hones in on fundamental contention that reality is not something that lives outside of our perception. It is deeply affected by the very act of measuring and perceiving it. That very thesis should substantiate the following conviction that I hold dear. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding of reality should be expressly distinct from the journey of deriving meaning from all such discoveries. They are two different domains requiring tremendously different tools of perception and judgement. However, the are both undeniably influenced by the person evaluating them. Meaning will always be an intrinsic conception. The measurer will always influence what it eventually becomes. In this our pursuit of the nature of reality has given us clues as to what we can expect as we pursue meaning. Who we are and what intentions we bring can profoundly influence what we see, just as is evident in the uncertainty principle.
I often struggle with works such as this that paint a false dichotomy between deep and profound faith in God and an acceptance and interest in scientific inquiry. While there have been self interested parties that fomented conflict between these two spheres over the centuries, the truth is that these are completely different questions and endeavors. One searches for knowledge and understanding and the other for meaning. Nothing in this work provided a convincing argument that there cannot be compatibility between the two.
I often struggle with works such as this that paint a false dichotomy between deep and profound faith in God and an acceptance and interest in scientific inquiry. While there have been self interested parties that fomented conflict between these two spheres over the centuries, the truth is that these are completely different questions and endeavors. One searches for knowledge and understanding and the other for meaning. Nothing in this work provided a convincing argument that there cannot be compatibility between the two.
November 28, 2023
Egginton tries to provide accessible explanations of both Kantian epistemology and quantum mechanics in the same book. That’s a strange and ridiculously daunting task, but the guy does a pretty good job of it by using Borges to weave Heisenberg and Kant together. All three essentially argue that certain metaphysical prejudices are central to the way we experience the world.
I loved the topics discussed, and I think he did a fine job of identifying profound connections between the three named thinkers. 18th-century philosophers influenced 20th-century physicists in some deep ways. Some mind-blowing stuff. He also provided excellent biographical background which was enjoyable to read.
If you have a doctorate on Kant or QM, you’ll obviously find some of the explanations shallow, and the structure of the book occasionally seemed repetitive or disorganized. But Egginton’s theses hold, and since this book fills such a great interdisciplinary niche, it still merits a high rating.
Hopefully I’ll get around to self-studying both classical and quantum physics at some point—but I’ll definitely be reading Borges in the interim.
I loved the topics discussed, and I think he did a fine job of identifying profound connections between the three named thinkers. 18th-century philosophers influenced 20th-century physicists in some deep ways. Some mind-blowing stuff. He also provided excellent biographical background which was enjoyable to read.
If you have a doctorate on Kant or QM, you’ll obviously find some of the explanations shallow, and the structure of the book occasionally seemed repetitive or disorganized. But Egginton’s theses hold, and since this book fills such a great interdisciplinary niche, it still merits a high rating.
Hopefully I’ll get around to self-studying both classical and quantum physics at some point—but I’ll definitely be reading Borges in the interim.
October 31, 2024
Scientists and other thinkers are usually celebrated for dramatic advances in knowledge, new theories that explain mysteries or enable leaps in understanding. But there are also others whose accomplishments are no less amazing but that articulate the limits of knowledge, that point us to what we do not and will never know.
That’s what Egginton is celebrating here. The three thinkers he focuses on — Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant — achieve their greatest successes in articulating those limits of knowledge. In the cases of Kant and Heisenberg, they articulate those limits in precise detail. In the case of Borges, he leads us to literary experiences of those limits, often surprising and a bit dismaying.
Egginton’s principal claim, illustrated by alternating perspectives on those three thinkers and their lives, is that we can never have the knowledge of angels (or gods) — a knowledge that is only available to a mind that observes the world altogether as an object. The perspective that some philosophers have called “the view from nowhere.”
By contrast, Egginton generalizes and stresses a point we find in each of those three. Knowledge is by necessity knowledge in the world and never of it in toto. By necessity because we, the knowers are by necessity in the world and never outside it to observe it in toto.
Kant deserves some priority in the story. Not just because he predates the other two, but because he lays out, in The Critique of Pure Reason, the conditions for the possibility of experience (and knowledge) per se. It is Kant’s self-styled “Copernican Revolution” that places those conditions in the activity of human reason — the web of concepts that allows us to weave sense impressions into a coherent world, a world of events causally related within space and time. The understandability of the world resides in us, in reason.
Kant’s theory is sometimes interpreted as “empirical realism” and “transcendental idealism.” “Empirical realism��� because he claims that the world we know through our sense impressions (“intuitions” in Kant’s wording) and the conceptual apparatus contributed by reason is a fully observable and objective empirical reality, subject to scientific understanding as well as everyday understanding.
“Transcendental idealism” because that objective reality is an objectivity built on our perceptual interactions and rational constructions. That world is accordingly dependent on the contributions of reasoning, knowing subjects, furnishing the “conditions of possibility for experience” (Kant’s understanding of the term “transcendental”). We can only refer emptily to any world that is independent of those senses and concepts — a world of “things in themselves.”
The “critical” task of philosophy, according to Kant, is to prevent us from going beyond claims about the empirical world to make claims about that world of “things in themselves,” as when we treat the concepts contributed by reason, such as causality and even space and time, as real in a metaphysical sense, as things in themselves independent of us.
Heisenberg in turn places observation (and an observer) in a critical, ineliminable place in his picture of scientific knowledge. The world of particle physics is the world accessible to us specifically through our modes of observation. The paradoxes of quantum physics (e.g., Schrodinger’s Cat, the mysteries of the double slit experiment, and others) are paradoxes within those methods of observation and their results.
Einstein’s insistence that, for example, the paths of particles in cloud chambers, must, despite the evidence, be continuous, is a claim about a reality inaccessible to observation, a reality of “things in themselves.”
Borges (and I admit I haven’t read much of Borges’s writings) bring those experiences of the limits of perception and reason to imaginable situations, such as his story, “The Library of Babel.” I’m going to have to read Borges to appreciate Egginton’s discussions.
Egginton’s point, that knowledge is always in the world, not of it in toto, is not new, of course. After all, he traces it back to Kant. It’s also present in other thinkers, like Heidegger and Wittgenstein. And we can think of the claim as one of “naturalizing” knowledge (not in the sense of Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalized” which makes the theory of knowledge a purely scientific problem), in the sense of conceiving knowledge as something a natural creature like us pursues in its interactions with the world.
Knowing, on this view, is an action, an action within the world. Making observations, as physicists do when they measure the properties of a particle, are interactions within the world, between two entities in that world, as Heisenberg stresses. That picture, as obvious as it seems, is at odds with how we often treat knowledge, as something of but not in the world.
Egginton’s work hovers on the border between intellectual history and philosophy itself, an historically based exposition of the claims he wants to present and defend.
I’m unsure of some points of his account, particularly in likening the claims of the three thinkers to one another’s. Certainly, for example, Heisenberg had read Kant, and his emphasis on the role of the observer may well be derived, in part, from that reading. But is the inaccessibility of the particle’s “true nature” the same as what Kant had in mind? Kant’s thing-in-itself isn’t the electron or photon in its unobserved state — the uncertainty of its properties in advance of measurement is at most a single aspect of the unknowability of things-in-themselves in the absolute sense of Kant’s thinking.
But raising the similarity is provocative. We say that the electron “has no position” between measurements. What does that really mean? Is the electron even present between measurements? Does it disappear from empirical reality? I’ll stop there on that one.
Egginton also turns the argument inwards, toward self-knowledge and the paradoxes of free will and determinism.
Knowledge is a two-part relationship — a knower and a known. In trying to “know reality” (in toto) or in trying to know ourselves, we violate that principle. We try to be both knower and known at the same time.
Egginton asks us to imagine a person in full knowledge of all of her options in a precisely defined situation, along with all the influences on the choice she is about to make. If determinism is true, she has no choice to make. She knows what she will choose, negating its status as a “choice” (at least in the favored sense).
Yet, would we feel comfortable saying she simply acts in conformity to her influences, in a mechanistically determined manner? How do you do that? Confronting options, how do you let yourself be determined? You do after all have to do something, you have to do something a lot like choosing even if what you choose is what you knew you were determined to choose.
This is the kind of perplexity that Egginton believes arises from treating knowledge as the idealized knowledge of angels, that (in real terms) unattainable knowledge, for example, of all influences on a person’s action and how their influence is exerted. Some scientists may claim that such knowledge is at least in principle attainable, but that is only a project of confidence, a Laplacian article of faith, not itself a scientific judgment. Meanwhile the perplexities remain and come to a head in the imagined realization of that perfect knowledge.
There is also an even bigger picture in which to place Egginton’s claims. In keeping with the “angel” metaphor, it is that we just aren’t who we imagine ourselves to be — creatures who are more than creatures, whose faculties reach beyond the natural and the limits of the natural, the absolute knowledge reserved for gods. Our compensation is a rightful sense of mystery, humility, and wonder at what we can’t penetrate.
Egginton does not cite what I think is Kant’s most quotable remark from the Critique of Pure Reason — “Human reason has a peculiar fate in one kind of its cognitions: it is troubled by questions that it cannot dismiss, because they are posed to it by the nature of reason itself, but that it also cannot answer, because they surpass human reason’s every ability.”
If you’ve understood that, you’ve understood a lot, and you’ve understood something about what you’ll never understand.
That’s what Egginton is celebrating here. The three thinkers he focuses on — Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant — achieve their greatest successes in articulating those limits of knowledge. In the cases of Kant and Heisenberg, they articulate those limits in precise detail. In the case of Borges, he leads us to literary experiences of those limits, often surprising and a bit dismaying.
Egginton’s principal claim, illustrated by alternating perspectives on those three thinkers and their lives, is that we can never have the knowledge of angels (or gods) — a knowledge that is only available to a mind that observes the world altogether as an object. The perspective that some philosophers have called “the view from nowhere.”
By contrast, Egginton generalizes and stresses a point we find in each of those three. Knowledge is by necessity knowledge in the world and never of it in toto. By necessity because we, the knowers are by necessity in the world and never outside it to observe it in toto.
Kant deserves some priority in the story. Not just because he predates the other two, but because he lays out, in The Critique of Pure Reason, the conditions for the possibility of experience (and knowledge) per se. It is Kant’s self-styled “Copernican Revolution” that places those conditions in the activity of human reason — the web of concepts that allows us to weave sense impressions into a coherent world, a world of events causally related within space and time. The understandability of the world resides in us, in reason.
Kant’s theory is sometimes interpreted as “empirical realism” and “transcendental idealism.” “Empirical realism��� because he claims that the world we know through our sense impressions (“intuitions” in Kant’s wording) and the conceptual apparatus contributed by reason is a fully observable and objective empirical reality, subject to scientific understanding as well as everyday understanding.
“Transcendental idealism” because that objective reality is an objectivity built on our perceptual interactions and rational constructions. That world is accordingly dependent on the contributions of reasoning, knowing subjects, furnishing the “conditions of possibility for experience” (Kant’s understanding of the term “transcendental”). We can only refer emptily to any world that is independent of those senses and concepts — a world of “things in themselves.”
The “critical” task of philosophy, according to Kant, is to prevent us from going beyond claims about the empirical world to make claims about that world of “things in themselves,” as when we treat the concepts contributed by reason, such as causality and even space and time, as real in a metaphysical sense, as things in themselves independent of us.
Heisenberg in turn places observation (and an observer) in a critical, ineliminable place in his picture of scientific knowledge. The world of particle physics is the world accessible to us specifically through our modes of observation. The paradoxes of quantum physics (e.g., Schrodinger’s Cat, the mysteries of the double slit experiment, and others) are paradoxes within those methods of observation and their results.
Einstein’s insistence that, for example, the paths of particles in cloud chambers, must, despite the evidence, be continuous, is a claim about a reality inaccessible to observation, a reality of “things in themselves.”
Borges (and I admit I haven’t read much of Borges’s writings) bring those experiences of the limits of perception and reason to imaginable situations, such as his story, “The Library of Babel.” I’m going to have to read Borges to appreciate Egginton’s discussions.
Egginton’s point, that knowledge is always in the world, not of it in toto, is not new, of course. After all, he traces it back to Kant. It’s also present in other thinkers, like Heidegger and Wittgenstein. And we can think of the claim as one of “naturalizing” knowledge (not in the sense of Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalized” which makes the theory of knowledge a purely scientific problem), in the sense of conceiving knowledge as something a natural creature like us pursues in its interactions with the world.
Knowing, on this view, is an action, an action within the world. Making observations, as physicists do when they measure the properties of a particle, are interactions within the world, between two entities in that world, as Heisenberg stresses. That picture, as obvious as it seems, is at odds with how we often treat knowledge, as something of but not in the world.
Egginton’s work hovers on the border between intellectual history and philosophy itself, an historically based exposition of the claims he wants to present and defend.
I’m unsure of some points of his account, particularly in likening the claims of the three thinkers to one another’s. Certainly, for example, Heisenberg had read Kant, and his emphasis on the role of the observer may well be derived, in part, from that reading. But is the inaccessibility of the particle’s “true nature” the same as what Kant had in mind? Kant’s thing-in-itself isn’t the electron or photon in its unobserved state — the uncertainty of its properties in advance of measurement is at most a single aspect of the unknowability of things-in-themselves in the absolute sense of Kant’s thinking.
But raising the similarity is provocative. We say that the electron “has no position” between measurements. What does that really mean? Is the electron even present between measurements? Does it disappear from empirical reality? I’ll stop there on that one.
Egginton also turns the argument inwards, toward self-knowledge and the paradoxes of free will and determinism.
Knowledge is a two-part relationship — a knower and a known. In trying to “know reality” (in toto) or in trying to know ourselves, we violate that principle. We try to be both knower and known at the same time.
Egginton asks us to imagine a person in full knowledge of all of her options in a precisely defined situation, along with all the influences on the choice she is about to make. If determinism is true, she has no choice to make. She knows what she will choose, negating its status as a “choice” (at least in the favored sense).
Yet, would we feel comfortable saying she simply acts in conformity to her influences, in a mechanistically determined manner? How do you do that? Confronting options, how do you let yourself be determined? You do after all have to do something, you have to do something a lot like choosing even if what you choose is what you knew you were determined to choose.
This is the kind of perplexity that Egginton believes arises from treating knowledge as the idealized knowledge of angels, that (in real terms) unattainable knowledge, for example, of all influences on a person’s action and how their influence is exerted. Some scientists may claim that such knowledge is at least in principle attainable, but that is only a project of confidence, a Laplacian article of faith, not itself a scientific judgment. Meanwhile the perplexities remain and come to a head in the imagined realization of that perfect knowledge.
There is also an even bigger picture in which to place Egginton’s claims. In keeping with the “angel” metaphor, it is that we just aren’t who we imagine ourselves to be — creatures who are more than creatures, whose faculties reach beyond the natural and the limits of the natural, the absolute knowledge reserved for gods. Our compensation is a rightful sense of mystery, humility, and wonder at what we can’t penetrate.
Egginton does not cite what I think is Kant’s most quotable remark from the Critique of Pure Reason — “Human reason has a peculiar fate in one kind of its cognitions: it is troubled by questions that it cannot dismiss, because they are posed to it by the nature of reason itself, but that it also cannot answer, because they surpass human reason’s every ability.”
If you’ve understood that, you’ve understood a lot, and you’ve understood something about what you’ll never understand.
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