Benjam铆n Labatut (Pushkin Press)
IT IS a curious and morbid fact that some of the 20th century鈥檚 most talented scientists died by suicide or experienced mental breakdowns so severe that they had to leave their fields altogether. One often quoted physics textbook, States of Matter by David L. Goodstein, opens with these sentences: 鈥淟udwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.鈥�
These events are more than dark curiosities to Benjam铆n Labatut, whose previous book, When We Cease to Understand the World, was shortlisted for the . Instead, as he suggests in The MANIAC (his first book written in English), they say something meaningful about the kind of knowledge unearthed by scientists over the past century in areas such as nuclear fission, artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics 鈥� and the various ruptures this science has wrought.
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The MANIAC centres on John von Neumann, the mathematician, physicist and polymath who contributed to or invented an improbable number of fields or devices, including game theory, the architecture of modern computers and the detonation mechanism for the first nuclear bomb.
Von Neumann鈥檚 career makes up much of the book: we read about his precocious experiments to prove the foundations of mathematics; his later years on the Manhattan Project, which produced the first nuclear weapons; and his experiments with the MANIAC computer, then the most powerful computer in the world, at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico. But it is his personal relationships that keep the book humming along: the affairs, spats and lack of interest in the moral dimensions of nuclear warfare.
We almost never hear from von Neumann himself, but instead have a portrait painted of him through short, first-person reminiscences from his family, friends and rivals. Many of these 鈥渞ecollections鈥� are fictionalised, but Labatut says they are based on real events and quotes. This strange, fabulistic mixture of fact and fiction can be disorienting, but it also helps weave a compelling, immersive narrative.
Though von Neumann鈥檚 scientific contributions were inspired and singular, Labatut also sees them as part of a greater movement: the steady abstraction of the world, and life, into numbers and equations.
Ehrenfest鈥檚 encounters with quantum mechanics, and its fundamental unknowability, are the starting point of The MANIAC. Its ending 鈥� or perhaps the beginning of the end for us puny humans 鈥� focuses on AI firm DeepMind鈥檚 2016 duel with Lee Sedol, then the world鈥檚 best player of Go, an ancient and fiendishly complex board game. For Labatut, this marks the apparent dawn of the age of AI. Von Neumann鈥檚 obsessions with artificial life and cellular automata may have started this work, he suggests, but the story seems to be just beginning.
Of course, viewed from a modern perspective, many of Ehrenfest鈥檚 mental health crises might as easily be explained by a lack of adequate healthcare, while von Neumann鈥檚 鈥渋diosyncrasies鈥� may fit the cultural norms of their time. Labatut鈥檚 infusion of the esoteric and profound, as well as his fabulations, into what many scientists see as the plain facts of reality may not work for all. But he is a writer first, with no formal scientific training: he isn鈥檛 interested in plain facts, rather the emotional and philosophical landscape they conjure.
Science has too often failed to look past its own backyard or to examine its moral responsibilities. This myopia comes with grave consequences, and The MANIAC is in deadly earnest when it warns that they shouldn鈥檛 be ignored.
