Here is a passage from her first autobiographical volume, Hope Against Hope (trans. Max Hayward, 1970), lines retained since I first read the book in 1974:
“To think that we could have had an ordinary life with its bickering, broken hearts and divorce suits! There are people in the world so crazy as not to realize that this is normal human existence of the kind everybody should aim at. What wouldn’t we have given for such ordinary heartbreaks!”
The human craving for immunity to life’s unpleasantness is blind and eternal, while the gratitude we owe for our “ordinary heartbreaks” is bottomless. And another:
“The coming of a new book into [her husband’s] life was like a first encounter with someone destined to be a friend.”That passage is from Chapter 49 of Hope Against Hope, “The Reader of One Book,” which begins like this:
“In his youth M. always carefully weighed his words—it was only later that he tended toward levity. In 1919, when he was still very young, he once told me that there was no need at all to have a lot of books, and that it was best to read one book all one’s life. ‘Do you mean the Bible?’ I asked. ‘Why not?’ he replied.”
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100 Big Unanswered Scientific Questions
The NY Times recently asked 100 scientists from across dozens of disciplines: “What is a big unanswered question in your field?”Here are some of their questions that caught my eye:
4. When and where did the cognitive capacities that made language, mathematics and complex societies possible first emerge?
9. Why does full writing — complete sentences that can make sense to readers out of context — appear so late in human history?
37. Why are humans the only species with a chin?
40. What is dark matter?
48. Do organisms use quantum effects, such as entanglement and superposition?
54. Will we ever decipher Linear A, Cypro-Minoan and other important ancient scripts?
61. What would be the global impact of a supervolcanic eruption in modern times?
70. Blue whales are the biggest animals ever to exist on Earth. Where are their babies born?
81. Chemical reactions have had a speed limit, described more than a century ago. Can we learn to surpass it?
93. Can environmental sustainability be achieved under capitalism?
