---
product_id: 317083504
title: "When We Cease to Understand the World"
price: "€ 24.78"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.fr/products/317083504-when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world
store_origin: FR
region: France
---

# When We Cease to Understand the World

**Price:** € 24.78
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** When We Cease to Understand the World
- **How much does it cost?** € 24.78 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.fr](https://www.desertcart.fr/products/317083504-when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world)

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## Description

desertcart.com: When We Cease to Understand the World: 9781681375663: Labatut, Benjamin, West, Adrian Nathan: Books

Review: Fabulous - Amazing and deep thoughts through a different angle I had never read before. A masterpiece!
Review: Very entertaining - This is meant to be thought provoking and it explains concepts of math science and physics in terms of the challenges faced by the people who ended up being the most famous ones to explain them. After some brutal depictions of the very dark side of humans and what they have done with chemistry the book moves along into an engrossing narrative. Since the language these people were most fluent in was math and they worked on a mathematical level far above the understanding of most people then this book has to rely on a fictional narrative that depicts the dilemma of having to introduce new ideas that threaten established dogma and the staus quo of academia. It’s extremely entertaining to read. If you are one of those people who would like to believe that everyone who is absorbed by math and science somehow rises above the whole messy spectrum of human experience then you won’t like this book and you can go gargle with listerine and sharpen your pencils now for a cleansing moment. But if you want a succinct but fun explanation of the most fundamental concepts of quantum theory and how even the ones who first realized what they were on to had a rough time with it then you might enjoy this book.

## Images

![When We Cease to Understand the World - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81Wodz8m5vL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fabulous
*by F***A on December 31, 2025*

Amazing and deep thoughts through a different angle I had never read before. A masterpiece!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very entertaining
*by M***. on November 28, 2020*

This is meant to be thought provoking and it explains concepts of math science and physics in terms of the challenges faced by the people who ended up being the most famous ones to explain them. After some brutal depictions of the very dark side of humans and what they have done with chemistry the book moves along into an engrossing narrative. Since the language these people were most fluent in was math and they worked on a mathematical level far above the understanding of most people then this book has to rely on a fictional narrative that depicts the dilemma of having to introduce new ideas that threaten established dogma and the staus quo of academia. It’s extremely entertaining to read. If you are one of those people who would like to believe that everyone who is absorbed by math and science somehow rises above the whole messy spectrum of human experience then you won’t like this book and you can go gargle with listerine and sharpen your pencils now for a cleansing moment. But if you want a succinct but fun explanation of the most fundamental concepts of quantum theory and how even the ones who first realized what they were on to had a rough time with it then you might enjoy this book.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thought provoking
*by A***N on June 25, 2024*

Labatut, B. (2020). When we cease to understand the world (A. N. West, Trans.). New York Review Books. Benjamin Labatut is a writer who was born in the Netherlands and currently lives in Chile. This is a strangely wonderful "work of fiction based on real events" exploring the lives of scientists, physicists, and mathematicians who through their questions, exploration, and focus began to contemplate the consequences and implications of that which they created. The narrative provides a fictionalized account of Herman Goring, Johann Jacob Diesback, Johann Conrad Dippel, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Fritz Haber, Karl Schwarzschild, Shinichi Mochizuki, Alexander Grothendieck, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Karl Heisenberg, Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th duc de Broglie, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein. In the midst of their creativity, these creators experienced ill-health, madness, guilt, and regret. The final chapter is written through the eyes of the narrator who listens to his night gardener, a mathematician, who concluded, "that it was mathematics - not nuclear weapons, computers, biological warfare or our climate Armageddon - which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we would simply not be able to grasp what being human really meant." This book explores the lives of those who explore the sciences, physics, and mathematics. Their outputs often raise questions about potential and even unintended consequences. The writing combines research, history, and speculative fiction. For those interested in the moral and ethical questions raised by the film Oppenheimer, this book would be a wonderful book for contemplation.

## Frequently Bought Together

- When We Cease to Understand the World
- The MANIAC
- Orbital: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)

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*Product available on Desertcart France*
*Store origin: FR*
*Last updated: 2026-02-04*