Marc's Reviews > Einstein’s Dreams

I can imagine that unprepared readers will initially be surprised by this book: despite the title, Einstein is not immediately in view. The author jumps from one vignette to another – 30 in total, short stories that seem to vaguely philosophize about the phenomenon of time, a strange collection of thoughts and ideas, seemingly without meaning. But nothing could be further from the truth. Most pieces are situated in Bern and the surrounding area, the place where Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and the grandmaster himself also appears in the interludes. So maybe, yes. And then you realize that Lightman has moved into Einstein's head, following his thoughts on how strange the phenomenon of time is. And so this becomes a thorough exploration of the theme of time, in the form of thought experiments: what if life only lasted 1 day, or on the contrary, lasted forever? What if there were no future, or time were discontinuous? Would it impact our experience of time? Lightman makes it clear that it would all make a serious difference. The vignettes may be light-hearted fantasies that occasionally remind us of the games of Jorge Borges. But there is a system and a message behind it: time is elusive, but it does make a difference to a real-life person.