'Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist' by Russell McCormmach

In the last year non-fiction science books has taken my interest.  Mainly it's been mathematical books and in reading them I have found that it is a deeply invigorating subject.  Invigorated by the huge changes in how one approaches and what assumptions one has when dealing with the subject.

It makes me think how that mathematicians, as a whole, have been underserved in the arts, with the
only two exceptions I can bring to mind, being: A Beautiful Mind, a film starring Russell Crowe as John Nash, and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia with one of the main characters, Thomasina Coverly, being a young maths genius.

Yet there are whole scores of stories to be done about mathematicians and other scientists, as many of them involve an interesting series of events in order for them to 'discover' their insight into how mathematical processes work with human dramas in their own right.

One such story comes in the form of Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist by Russell McCormmach, about a fictional German physicist, Victor Jakob, made up from a collage of other real life physicists, in 1918 just as the First World War comes to a close.

Jakob is a melancholy man, going through great changes in himself as the world around him changes.  His country has been four years at war while his doubts about it grow and his beloved subject physics is undergoing an impressive revolution from classical physics, as he is used to understanding it and discussing it, to the more relativistic physics of Einstein.

The professor seems lost in time, given to deep pondering, forever going over events, forever trying to untangle all the knots that his subject gives for him yet he cannot help but to keep toying with such things.  He is, in a sense, a man left behind.  He frequently has dreams of being persecuted by his colleges  and gives a feeling that he has missed the boat on the new wave of thinking.  It is in part a story about ageing.

The book is theory heavy but I was unfazed as I was used to reading W. G. Sebald (I did my English Lit dissertation on him) who mixes fact and fiction in much the same way.  In fact I wonder how accurate I would be if I said that McCormmach's book anticipates the more fully formed books of Sebald with it's mixture of reality, myth and melancholy, which gives the reader a type of education and a type of experience.

Also having read a lot of relatively dry science I enjoyed tackling the same problems in a more fleshed out human way, hanging the theory on hooks of characters and scenes and drama.

It may have been criticised for not being literature enough but I think in the view that using science as the meat for a novel was a relatively new way of writing about history (McCormmach was a science-history professor, similar to Sebald)  I found that it was engaging enough to keep me interested, to keep me caring about this character and his 'night thoughts' of the title.

It is quite a gloomy book, so much pessimism in the war and in the general direction of physics, this is really about a man at the end of his life as much as his way of life.  I think that with that and with it's physics this book probably only caters to a certain type of person, maybe even a rare one, but it's not one that is going to be adapted to the screen anytime soon.

Now this is where you hit a paywall- well not exactly a paywall more like a moat you can swim across- but what I'm saying is that if you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me by going on Patreon.com and search for Alistair David Todd-Poet. 

I only ask for the lowest possible donation ($1) so that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating about bills and tax.  Two reasons I ask you of this is 1) It would mean a lot to me and 2) I can buy more books. 

Another way you can support me is by buying one of the literary books that I write.  The links are on the side of the website, if you are reading this from a mobile phone than switch to web mode to see it.

You can even message me with recommendations of books I should cover that I haven't already, I'd be really interested in what you have to offer me.  In the meantime stay safe and all the best to you.