“Book Descriptions: Starting in the subatomic realm where matter and energy converge and nature seems fickle, and zooming out to consider history on a cosmological scale, the author wonders why there is not enough room for one more child in the universe. With curiosity, compassion, and wit, the essays in The Uncertainty Principle introduce the reader to the fundamental patterns of the universe that influence our existence. In “What Little Boys Are Made Of,” the caprices of quantum interactions at the beginning of time initiate a chain of events that leads to the birth of a child. “Entanglement” addresses the bizarre behavior of subatomic particles that can communicate at a distance, and muses that human beings might be connected in ways we do not understand. In the title essay, a fragile embryo clings to life, and its fate is uncertain until the last moment, when mass and energy, time, love, and hope combine to reveal the truth. Filled with rich, lyrical prose, The Uncertainty Principle is not just a book for the science-minded; it’s the story of life, relationships, family ties, and the humorous entanglement that binds us all together.
“A unique and beautiful synthesis of literary prose and physics. Wachman’s command of both the art and the science is something truly impressive.” —Dr. Michael Litos, Professor of Physics at University of Colorado–Boulder
“From quantum entanglement to cold fusion, Joel Wachman spies the connections, visible, subtle, and metaphorical—which is hardly, in the world of The Uncertainty Principle, to say unreal—between the mechanics of the universe and those that try to make him children. In Wachman’s delightful telling of the disagreeable struggles to inseminate his Ruby, “the world is not really made of stuff at all. At the smallest level, it is made of influences.” Among these influences is the pain of the couple’s efforts on the precise and lucid pleasures of Wachman’s prose and the largess of his fancy. Or as he joyously foresees, in relating to his yet-unborn son the boy’s forelife among the particles and waves, “Look! Look! There you are. Deep inside that quantum spark. How marvelous, you crumb of universe.” —A. J. Adler, author of Waiting for Word” DRIVE
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