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73rd out of 471 books
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1,287 voters
Einstein's Dreams
A modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failu...more
Paperback, 179 pages
Published
March 2nd 2011
by Vintage
(first published January 1st 1993)
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What a fun, fast (relatively..pun intended) and thought-provoking read! Lightman presents easily over 20+ depictions of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Each little vignette unveils a different world of how to perceive time. If time were crystal ball, Lightman looks at this crystal ball from above, below, upside down, inside out, backwards, forward etc. Although some of the stories weren’t incredibly captivating — most were and I would suggest this book to any artist visual/musical/literary or p...more
I read this book once a year. It is a masterpiece.
I am constantly in awe of Lightman's ability to astound through his writing and premise. The worlds he creates in each dream are unlike anything I've read or seen. They are so imaginative, and he does so in only a few tiny little pages, where most authors would need hundreds of pages, or dozens of volumes in a series to do less. It's like Lightman has made a reduction of speculative fiction, and written it with only the barest essent...more
I am constantly in awe of Lightman's ability to astound through his writing and premise. The worlds he creates in each dream are unlike anything I've read or seen. They are so imaginative, and he does so in only a few tiny little pages, where most authors would need hundreds of pages, or dozens of volumes in a series to do less. It's like Lightman has made a reduction of speculative fiction, and written it with only the barest essent...more
Exquisite, Everyone should read this book, everyone should give this book away, it should be thrown from rooftops and forced upon youngsters. I will not venture to commingle a necessarily clunky and didactic summary with the poetic prose that is as much about the feeling stirred from reading each individual word than anything a summary could attempt. Suffice it to say that this book is excellent, beautiful and amazing, if a book is universally capable of changing your life... if only for a momen...more
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I don't remember this book well enough to write a full review. But over a decade after reading it, one of the ideas presented in it has stayed with me. That idea was that there are people who function according to the rhythms of their bodies, and those who function according to the rhythms of the clock. The book suggested that a person can be one or the other, but not both. At the time I read it, I was in the process of shifting away from my clock-based life, and things have never quite been...more
I've told you once, guys, that I read this book for the first time last week, on my way back home with mikrolet M19 along Kalimalang. I reached page 80 something at the time.
Then I left it beside my bed, concentrated finishing Honeymoon with My Brother, and when I went back to Parung on Monday, this book was untouched. During the day I was curious, why did many people could give 5 stars for this book?
I spent a night in Jakarta last Wednesday, and this time I took this boo...more
Then I left it beside my bed, concentrated finishing Honeymoon with My Brother, and when I went back to Parung on Monday, this book was untouched. During the day I was curious, why did many people could give 5 stars for this book?
I spent a night in Jakarta last Wednesday, and this time I took this boo...more
This 179 page book took me four days to read. Not because it was difficult. In fact, the prose was exquisite and effortless in its beauty. It was because I wanted to read and cherish all of the novel's short vignettes rather than rush through. The book is a series of dreams, close to 30 in all, that Albert Einstein is dreaming as he struggles with his theory of relativity. Alan Lightman, a physicist himself, describes aspects of the theory and time itself through these descriptive "stories"...more
حصلت على نسخة من هذا العمل منذ خمس سنوات, ومنذ ذلك الحين وأنا أعيد
قراءته مره كل عام.
كتاب أحلام اينشتاين عبارة عن ثلاثين فصلاً قصيراً, كل فصل هو مزيج من القصة والفلسفة والعلم والتصوف بخصوص الزمن.
كل فصل يحكي قصة عالم مختلف للزمن فيه قصة مختلفه .. في أحد العوالم يكون الزمن دائري يكرر نفسه إلا ما لانهاية .. وفي عالم أخر يكون الزمن عبارة عن ثلاث ابعاد في كل بعد يكون لكل شخص قصة مختلفه .. وفي عالم أخر لا يوجد مستقبل .. وفي عالم أخر يتغير الماضي .. وفي عالم أخر الزمن يسب...more
قراءته مره كل عام.
كتاب أحلام اينشتاين عبارة عن ثلاثين فصلاً قصيراً, كل فصل هو مزيج من القصة والفلسفة والعلم والتصوف بخصوص الزمن.
كل فصل يحكي قصة عالم مختلف للزمن فيه قصة مختلفه .. في أحد العوالم يكون الزمن دائري يكرر نفسه إلا ما لانهاية .. وفي عالم أخر يكون الزمن عبارة عن ثلاث ابعاد في كل بعد يكون لكل شخص قصة مختلفه .. وفي عالم أخر لا يوجد مستقبل .. وفي عالم أخر يتغير الماضي .. وفي عالم أخر الزمن يسب...more
this is one of the most amazing poetic explorations of einstein's theory of relativity i have ever read... technically it's considered a novel, but it's more like an essay collection in my opinion. i highly recommend this book. it gave me an entirely new perspective on viewing life and the meaning of "time".
from amazon:
The book takes flight when Einstein takes to his bed and we share his dreams, 30 little fables about places where time behaves quite differently. In o...more
from amazon:
The book takes flight when Einstein takes to his bed and we share his dreams, 30 little fables about places where time behaves quite differently. In o...more
I read this book years ago, and I think one Christmas I bought one copy for each of my siblings. Very poetic. Very imaginative. Very liberating.
This is my review from awhile back, in Bahasa Indonesia:
Ini salah satu buku favorit saya. Terdiri atas penggalan-penggalan mimpi, atau imajinasi, tepatnya, tentang waktu, dan apa yang terjadi kalau waktu tidak berjalan seperti normalnya waktu yang kita jalani sekarang ini. Kalau kamu membayangkan suatu cerita yang berjalan dengan ...more
This is my review from awhile back, in Bahasa Indonesia:
Ini salah satu buku favorit saya. Terdiri atas penggalan-penggalan mimpi, atau imajinasi, tepatnya, tentang waktu, dan apa yang terjadi kalau waktu tidak berjalan seperti normalnya waktu yang kita jalani sekarang ini. Kalau kamu membayangkan suatu cerita yang berjalan dengan ...more
Einstein's Dreams shows through stories the different traps in time that people fall into in life. Dwelling on the past, Living in the present, or focusing on the future are fine when done with a healthy balance but can become a pitfall if any single time past, present, or future, is given more emphasis than the next.
The Chapter 3 May 1905 illustrates what I believe is wrong with our society. It asks the age old question about which came first the chicken or the egg, or put anoth...more
The Chapter 3 May 1905 illustrates what I believe is wrong with our society. It asks the age old question about which came first the chicken or the egg, or put anoth...more
A friend recommended this to me after I lent her God's Debris. I feel like if I read this before Scott Adams' book I might've liked it a little more but I still think it, while for the most part being a worthwhile read, was nothing incredible. Of course it doesn't cover a broad range of ideas like God's Debris as each chapter is simply a different take on time, and while I can see the similarities it's probably unfair to lump them in together as Lightman's book is, I'm afraid, quite a bit inferi...more
Great quick read broken up into easy small portions. Written by a physicist; it imagines the dreams that might have inspired Einstein to come up with his brilliant advances while still a patent clerk in Bern.
The author puts lots of love into the writing. Einstein is a fascinating figure and these dreams serve to illustrate the ideas he introduced to science. Plus Einstein comes out as very human with plenty of anxieties and sadnesses that we all go through. It's also trippy as all g...more
The author puts lots of love into the writing. Einstein is a fascinating figure and these dreams serve to illustrate the ideas he introduced to science. Plus Einstein comes out as very human with plenty of anxieties and sadnesses that we all go through. It's also trippy as all g...more
Charming...
elegant....
Annoying!? Let me explain.
This is a thought provoking novella about the concept of time. Is "time" just a mirrored moment in life making everything thereafter future memories, perhaps indefinite moments that stop & go for 3 second intervals forever? Maybe all of our clocks are at a standstill in space & time is just a mere thought on earth? You get the point.
Too trippy for me. I will say that the stories are just lovely, I...more
elegant....
Annoying!? Let me explain.
This is a thought provoking novella about the concept of time. Is "time" just a mirrored moment in life making everything thereafter future memories, perhaps indefinite moments that stop & go for 3 second intervals forever? Maybe all of our clocks are at a standstill in space & time is just a mere thought on earth? You get the point.
Too trippy for me. I will say that the stories are just lovely, I...more
I first found this charming little book in a London, England, art museum. Later, it became popular in the states. This book is a mind-bender. It discusses the issue of time. Each chapter changes how time is measured and how we may reflect our lives in the mirror of this time-window. For example, what if one day lasted a lifetime? What if the small things in life were most important? In essence, the author turns time upside down, stretches it, shortens it, twists it ... and we get to see how we'd...more
Einstein, working as a patent clerk, just finished a paper on “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” It is 1905. He is waiting for a typist to prepare his manuscript. He dreams while waiting.
And every night for the next thirty, he dreams of relativity and the fantastical concept of time.
In every dream, time operates differently—in one, time is circular and people repeat their triumphs and mistakes over and over. In another, there is no time, only frozen moments.
E...more
And every night for the next thirty, he dreams of relativity and the fantastical concept of time.
In every dream, time operates differently—in one, time is circular and people repeat their triumphs and mistakes over and over. In another, there is no time, only frozen moments.
E...more
In Einstein’s Dreams, the author uses fiction to present and explore different variations of Einstein’s theory of relativity and the ways in which individuals could experience time. A few of the questions analyzed:
• What if time were measured only by the mechanical clock? What if people lived solely by mechanical time where “[t:]hey rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the c...more
• What if time were measured only by the mechanical clock? What if people lived solely by mechanical time where “[t:]hey rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the c...more
Every so often I read a book that intoxicates me. It takes me past polite interest in character, amusement at turns of phrase, curiosity and suspense over intricacies of plot. For as long as I can read it, I am lost. This is one of those books.
Salman Rushdie compares Lightman to Calvino with this book, and I agree - though instead of Invisible Cities, it reminded me of Difficult Loves. I used to read that book on the roof of the call center where I worked in college. Suffering from o...more
Salman Rushdie compares Lightman to Calvino with this book, and I agree - though instead of Invisible Cities, it reminded me of Difficult Loves. I used to read that book on the roof of the call center where I worked in college. Suffering from o...more
Buku ini merupakan buku fiksi karya fisikawan dosen MIT, Alan Lightman. Dalam buku ini, dia menceritakan bahwa Einstein mempunyai mimpi dan gagasan mengenai waktu. Yang mungkin berhubungan dengan teorinya mengenai waktu kelak.
Dalam buku ini, dikisahkan waktu seperti burung bulbul yang semua orang ingin menangkapnya agar waktu berhenti.
Ada pula gagasan, waktu itu hanya satu hari. Jadi manusia menghabiskan seluruh hidupnya dalam satu hari dan hanya melihat satu kali matahari terbit, sa...more
Dalam buku ini, dikisahkan waktu seperti burung bulbul yang semua orang ingin menangkapnya agar waktu berhenti.
Ada pula gagasan, waktu itu hanya satu hari. Jadi manusia menghabiskan seluruh hidupnya dalam satu hari dan hanya melihat satu kali matahari terbit, sa...more
I can't remember when I first read this book, but it had to have been some time in the 90s because I remember the person who gave it to me. (I believe the book was first published in 1993.)
Glancing through the reviews of others, I believe everyone may get something different from this book. For me, the impact was a realization that goes something like this: At any given point in time, everyone is living a different reality. Everything is happening at once. Without being able to adequ...more
Glancing through the reviews of others, I believe everyone may get something different from this book. For me, the impact was a realization that goes something like this: At any given point in time, everyone is living a different reality. Everything is happening at once. Without being able to adequ...more
Out of the DeLillo playbook, a business commuter gradually loses the use of his limbs, and his confronted with medical experts who disguise their inability to treat him and render a diagnosis by having him submit to yet more tests. A novel full of comic moments and sleights of hand-- the father's relationship with his son is sad stuff, two-hankie time-- but there is strong feeling of what the world would be like if all the things that we plug into stopped giving us the illusion of information an...more
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This book was given to me when I was about 16, by my high school homeroom teacher, who thought I might enjoy it. It sat on my shelf for these past 7 or so years, and I've FINALLY picked it up and read it. Man, I feel like a dummy for not reading it sooner.
This is a really interesting and thought-provoking book, with really beautiful language and great imagery.
Each chapter is a dream that Einstein has about time, and the different ways in which it might work. In one dream...more
This is a really interesting and thought-provoking book, with really beautiful language and great imagery.
Each chapter is a dream that Einstein has about time, and the different ways in which it might work. In one dream...more
Italo Calvino, my literary hero and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature (not necessarily in that order), said of this book that he hadn’t “been so excited by a novel . . . for a very long time.” And Dreams hit the NYTimes bestseller list in fiction. But is it a novel? Let me back up a bit. Whatever Dreams is, it is wonderfully moving, thought-provoking, well-written, and emotive. To return: is it a novel? We normally think of novels as having a central character(s), plot(s), and theme(s). A...more
The world will end on 26 September 1907. Everyone knows it. One year before the world ends, school were closed, one month before the end, businesses were closed. Everyone became united.
In this world of Einstein’s dream, everyone knows the world will end on this date, but why weren’t schools ended the year before the end of the world, why weren’t businesses closed long before the world will ends? If people know the world will soon come to an end why don’t they simply do nothing and wait ti...more
In this world of Einstein’s dream, everyone knows the world will end on this date, but why weren’t schools ended the year before the end of the world, why weren’t businesses closed long before the world will ends? If people know the world will soon come to an end why don’t they simply do nothing and wait ti...more
I recently read Einstein's Dreams for a class. It was a very interesting read but I found 2 chapters particularly fascinating. In one chapter, Einstein puts forth the idea that as one approaches the center of time, time moves at a very slow speed, almost as if it was frozen. Einstein claims that all of one's actions and joyful thoughts can be preserved. But in his idea, there appears to be contradictions. Einstein also states that at the center of time, bodily functions come to a halt, as if one...more
My table of contents, for reference:
. (Prologue) Waiting
Endless Repetition
People from the Future
Multiple-Dimension Decisions
Mechanical & Body Time
Age & Distance from Earth
Absolute Time
Cause > Effect, Effect > Cause
Nothing Much
. (Interlude) Reason for His Studies
Moments Before the End
Stuck in Time
Time Cycles = Universal Order
Frozen Time
No Time But Snapshots
Short-term Memory
Seers & F...more
. (Prologue) Waiting
Endless Repetition
People from the Future
Multiple-Dimension Decisions
Mechanical & Body Time
Age & Distance from Earth
Absolute Time
Cause > Effect, Effect > Cause
Nothing Much
. (Interlude) Reason for His Studies
Moments Before the End
Stuck in Time
Time Cycles = Universal Order
Frozen Time
No Time But Snapshots
Short-term Memory
Seers & F...more
This book was less appealing and less entertaining for me because it was very confusing. Alan Lightman is basically applying a story to each of Einstein's theory about time. The stories were perplexing and ambigious, however, the theories were simple, but soundly illogical. Einstein has many theories about time, some for instance would be that time is circular, so people are doing the same things over and over again. Another example of Einstein's theories is that Time flows slowly, the farther o...more
a very fun read, easily achivable in one sitting, that delves into different ways of looking at and percieving time. not a true book about einstien, but it uses his name with a little artistic licence. imagine a place where time flows faster at a lower elevation, and much slower at a higher elevation, or imagine if time flowe unevenly like a thick past slattered in uneven intervals so that on one street corner, it was the dark ages, and acroos the street, the future. good read.
We all know about Albert Einstein and his theories of time. At least, we should do. This book isn't exactly a story, nor is it non-fiction. It's an imagined account of dreams that Einstein may have had while exploring the idea that time is relative. Each chapter is no more than 5 pages long, and each one describes a dream world where time functions differently. In one, time is circular, and everybody relives their lives over and over again. In another, people live forever and are split into two ...more
This book right here has got to be one of the most amazing books that I have read in a very long time. For a person who doesn't like reading I think that I can read this book thousands of times and I won't bored of it. It basically about Albert Einstein and the different ways that he thought about time. I didn't realize until this book the many different ways that time can go by and not the typical routine type life. For exaple there is a part in the book where is describes where time never real...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| can we really know time? | 2 | 14 | Nov 01, 2011 09:50am |
Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams.
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“The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.”
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“If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”
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30 people liked it
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