杏吧原创

LANGUAGE, as Robyn Arianrhod points out, profoundly affects what we see in the world. And, because the language of nature appears to be mathematics, we are pretty much blind if we don鈥檛 know that language.

In Einstein鈥檚 Heroes, Arianrhod drives home her point with the example of James Clerk Maxwell. While other 19th-century physicists insisted on imagining the world in terms of everyday 鈥渕echanical鈥� models, Maxwell alone realised that Faraday鈥檚 鈥渇ields鈥� of electricity and magnetism could only truly be visualised by mathematics. They had no analogue in the everyday world.

It was a pivotal, liberating moment in the history of science. Free of its shackles, physics was able to travel to places beyond human language. Modern physics with its warped space, multiple dimensions and paradoxical quantum building blocks, was born.

You may find that Arianrhod鈥檚 prose starts a little stodgily, but her enthusiasm for the subject carries her on and she is soon well into her stride. This is a delightful book full of anecdote and historical colour.