[2020] When we cease to understand the world

Research References
,
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@book{labatut2020we,
  title={When We Cease to Understand the World: Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize},
  author={Labatut, B. and West, A.N.},
  isbn={9781782276135},
  lccn={2021005102},
  url={https://books.google.co.cr/books?id=ApvzDwAAQBAJ},
  year={2020},
  publisher={Pushkin Press}
}

In openlibrary.

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I loved this book. I’d be very curious what you have to say about it.

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I found it through @sarah.allen’s recommendation. We did a whole session around it: [Re]distribution study circle, session 5, November 2023: other sciences

It was research-only that time. Now I think it would have been nice for you to join. We can repeat it anytime :slight_smile:

I enjoyed reading it a lot. Humans are weird, and the dramas that catch our attention show how confused we are because we try to understand something that is not yet legible. The world is weirder than what our human senses can perceive, is what Bayo Akomolafe has been reminding us in every session of the class.

We made a mess, it’s natural, it’s human, it’s the moment in time in which I chose to live :person_shrugging: weird.

These past years I’ve been held together by Ursula K. LeGuin. If we can write any kind of stories, why do we write all these dystopic and depressive and patriarchal and imperialistic and shallow ones? Why do I consume them?

This book by Labatut showed me that there are many holes to fill in our recorded history, and that we can fill them with whatever engages our imagination. His fantastic tales are mostly awful. Now I imagine a solar punk revision of the history of science, one that makes us shift our perception of the present and open other futures.

For example, I’m now reading Inflamed. It’s about the shift in healing, from one of relations to one of colonial war against the other, the foreign, the different. This is a story we are told, and every being is suffering because we preserve it. Let’s just make a new one, sounds easy.

Let’s say that Schrödinger followed a raven into a dark forest, and in there our ancestors whispered the equation to him. Quantum mechanics is the result of the voices of the wind. Pay attention to the ravens. They will make a gesture to open the way.