IN A FLIGHT OF STARLINGS

An Italian Nobel laureate uses his background as a theoretical physicist to illustrate the importance of science.

In the opening paragraphs of this essay collection, Parisi states that crises like climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic have demonstrated that now, more than ever, science is essential to humanity’s survival. Unfortunately, in today’s hypercharged partisan landscape, nonscientists often view science through a lens of distrust, a stance that, most recently, led to the unnecessary deaths of the unvaccinated during the pandemic. “If citizens and politicians do not trust science,” writes the author, “we will move inexorably in the wrong direction, and the struggle against any number of global ills—global warming, infectious disease, hunger and poverty, the depletion of the planet’s natural resources—will fail.” Parisi believes that scientists can rebuild this trust by being more open about their processes and says that the purpose of this book is to help people understand how science really works. “It is important to understand how scientific consensus is achieved,” he writes. What follows is a collection of essays that range widely. The author offers a personal account about participating in an occupation of the Physics Institute in Rome in 1968; a philosophical treatise on the importance of metaphor in scientific breakthroughs; and a diagram-laden chapter on “the theory of spin glasses, considered my most significant contribution to physics.” Throughout, Parisi’s voice is amiable and conversational, which endows the book with the feel of a conversation with a wise and generous elder. However, each of the chapters is wildly different in tone and content. While some passages read like literary memoir, others read like dry excerpts from textbooks. Though the author returns to his thesis about science and trust at the end of the book, the thesis feels only loosely applicable in the middle.

An intermittently charming but incohesive essay collection about physics, matter, and memory.