Traversal: New Book by Maria Popova Explores Science and Art

2 days ago7 min read

Maria Popova’s new book, 'Traversal,' published by FSG, isn't just a sequel to her acclaimed 'Figuring'; it's a cosmic-scale expedition into the very machinery of human wonder. Think of it as the intellectual equivalent of pointing the James Webb Space Telescope inward, training its formidable lens on the nebulous intersection of science and art, chance and choice, chemistry and consciousness.Popova, through her signature method of weaving together the lives of celebrated and sidelined historical visionaries, treats their telescopes, poems, and postulates not as sterile tools, but as deeply human instruments—flawed, beautiful, and perpetually straining against the limits of understanding. She grapples with the fundamental tension that defines our species: our noble love for truth perpetually shadowed by a baser lust for power, our profound longings forever restless, and our losses somehow redeemed through the very act of seeking.This is where 'Traversal' truly launches. It moves beyond the biographical tapestry of 'Figuring' to ask the harder, more resonant questions we actually live with every day.How much of who we are is a random cosmic collision of particles, and how much is a series of deliberate choices made in the starlight of our awareness? Can the firing of neurons ever truly explain the symphony of a thought, the ache of a memory, or the color red as seen through a poet's eyes? Popova doesn't offer easy answers. Instead, she takes us on a journey through the minds of those who've dared to ask, using their struggles and epiphanies as waypoints.She reveals how a scientist's treatise and an artist's sonnet are often attempting the same impossible feat: mapping the uncharted territory of reality. One uses mathematics, the other metaphor, but both are acts of profound courage in the face of the infinite.The book's power lies in its demonstration of limitation—showing how every instrument of reckoning, no matter how precise, eventually hits a wall. Yet, in that very moment of limitation, Popova finds a strange kind of liberation.It's in the acknowledgment of what we cannot know that curiosity is reignited, and the traversal—the endless, beautiful journey—begins anew. For anyone who has ever looked at the night sky and felt a shudder of awe, or read a line of poetry that seemed to crack the universe open, 'Traversal' provides the intellectual framework for that feeling.It argues that our salvation lies not in final answers, but in the quality of our questions and the diverse, brilliant company we keep across centuries in asking them. It’s a book that makes you feel both infinitesimally small and crucially part of a grand, ongoing human project to comprehend the spectacular puzzle of existence.

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