I
wanted to review this book because the title sounded interesting. The last one
I had reviewed for Metapsychology was about the notion of identity as
well (Narrative
and Identity. Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture, edited by Jens Brockmeier and Donal Carbaugh). This
one could be a perfect complement: the topic is the same, but the approach
quite different – the title explicates it as using “physics, philosophy, and
literature.” Being a psychologist, I can not imagine how these disciplines
could contribute to our understanding of DID or depersonalization phenomena,
but this convinces me I can learn a lot from this book.

Once
I had been asked to review the book, I tried to find the author’s web
presentation in order to learn more about him. He turned out to be a physicist
teaching at a university, and a concert pianist as well. And not just a
concert pianist, he performed music in cycles that would include all piano
works by as diverse composers as Beethoven and Schoenberg. A quick look at the
index of the book showed a surprising combination: Kafka and Dostoyevski side
by side with Spinoza and Leibniz, or Bohr and Heizenberg. I could hardly wait,
this renaissance-like education seemed to promise so much.

On
the very first pages, the author mentions “…loss of individuality…,” says “…all
of us have only begun to ask the question of identity,” promising that he
“…will reach far back into the earliest human meditations on individuality and
identity.” So far, so good. Yes, he does mention modern quantum theory and
particles too often, but the rest is interesting. No, he does not mention
psychology or psychopathology, but patiently, he sure has no way to evade them.

And
then, page after page, I am faced with the fact that I understand the book less
and less. More frankly, I understand only its episodes and digressions. As the
book progresses, I become unable to follow its main argument. Alas, we are
total strangers: when the book is at its best, I am not sure whether I really
follow it; when it is devoted to philosophy or literature, I do not find it
profound or provocative enough to make reading really pleasurable. Therefore, I
shall write about my impressions, but I have to make explicit my lack of competence
in this field.

To
begin with, the author offers definitions of the most important terms he will
use throughout the book. At the very beginning, he says that he will “take the
word individuality to indicate what makes an individual be individual,
rather than simply a member of a species or an instance of some universal
quality” (p. 4), and that he will »take an individual to mean a being that is
‘noninstantiable,’ not an instance of some universal or general quality, but a
unique being« (p. 4). Drawing on examples from Homer, he states the following: “Following
the usage of philosophers, I will call this self-sameness his identity,
meaning the way Hector remains essentially himself in all times and places,
even though he may also change in important respects” (p. 5).

These
definitions being very clear and, or at least so it seems to me, widely used,
the author proceeds in a way a historian of science would do. He traces the
origin of these ideas all the way back to Homer, trying to connect physics, philosophy,
and literature. Everyone would sure learn a lot from this, but the main
argument of the book lies mainly in the field of quantum physics.

Namely,
the author states that “electrons are all radically equal. An electron’s
individuality is its species, and nothing more; it is always an instance of
electronhood, never a ‘noninstantiable’ individual” (p. 101). Or, in other
words: “The electron’s identicality runs so deep that no observer, not even
God, can distinguish one from another” (p. 119). This is, I believe, the main
point of the book, and, in the same time a very compelling thesis for
contemporary physics.

Still,
there is a question to which the author did not answer, or at least I did not
manage to find that answer. It is certainly true that “if fundamental particles
have lost their individuality, one wonders what this may imply for us” (p. 2).
Not only that “…microscopic physics is totally incommensurable with the macroscopic
objects we live with” (p. 144), but we are yet to face the problem of
transference from the level of particles to the level of personality. At least
for a psychologist such as myself, any answer which would include any
reductionistic explanations – which I did not find in this book – would be
quite unacceptable.

Let
me try to summarize. The author of this book would like to resolve important,
profound, and old questions in less than 200 pages, which is not enough for a
review of the problems. Therefore, he uses contemporary philosophy only
sporadically, he does not deal with modern psychological approaches to the
problem of identity, his selection of writers is very subjective (for example,
he does not even once mention James Joyce), he could have gained a lot from
studying other interpretations of the Holy Trinity. Still, he is obviously solidly
grounded in all the fields he writes about, his expertise in quantum physics
and history of science is impressive. This is certainly a book that offers a
lot to everyone, primarily due to its comprehensiveness and interdisciplinary
approach. Although it is written in a clear style, one must not be misled to
believe it is a suitable introductory text. But if you already know something
about the twentieth century physics, you should give it a try.

© 2002
Aleksandar Dimitrijevic

Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, Faculty of
Philosophy, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Categories: Philosophical