The Rigor of Angels (2023)by William Egginton

 Book Review

The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2023)

by William Egginton

   I'm always surprised when a genuinely intellectually challenging book makes it to a major release level- something that gets a New York Times review even though the audience for a such a book must surely be limited.  Such is the case with The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, which makes three different approaches to the idea that "reality" exists from some third-viewer perspective, a single, knowable thing.  Borges, Heisenberg and Kant all radically questioned this assumption at different times and places and through different disciplines- Borges, the 20th century author who labored in obscurity for decades before he became an international literary star,  Kant, the 18th century philosopher  and professor and Heisenberg, who really makes the whole book possible with his uncertainty principle, which crystalizes the idea that the observer impacts the event by their viewing of the event.

  Really, nothing in the book makes sense without Heisenberg, and what Egginton appears to be doing is linking the "discovery" of the uncertainty principle to prior philosophical and literary foreshadowing.   Like the New York Time reviewer, I was certainly put in mind Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, which features Heisenberg as a central fictional/non-fictional character. 

  As to my choice of listening to the Audiobook instead of reading an E-version:  MISTAKE.  There were many times where I felt comprehension slipping, to the point where I found myself slowing down the pace, going back several minutes to re-listen to different passages and pausing the book when I just couldn't keep up- I would not recommend the Audiobook.