Daniel Kehlmann: Measuring the World

[beer good]

It's 1828. (No it isn't!) No, but for the purpose of this novel, it is. Sort of. Well, that's where it starts. Or ends.

I'll start over. So it's a more-or-less fictionalised story of these two German scientists from the 18th century:

• Alexander von Humboldt, geographer and explorer
• Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician and physicist

The novel starts with the two of them meeting as old men in 1828 and then follows two parallel lines: that meeting and what happens to them afterwards forms the backdrop against which we're shown how they got there, from childhood to old age, from unusually intelligent kids to scientists who would revolutionise the way we see the world – each in their own way. Because obviously, this was one of the big turning points in history, the rise of the modern age where the world gets not only measured but also where those measures themselves are invented, where we came up with brand-new systems for learning (von Humboldt's brother Wilhelm invented the modern university), politics (the founding fathers of the US, Napoleon and others make cameo appearances) and ideas. I recently read Reinhard Koselleck's On the Semantics of Historical Time, where he notes that the late 18th century and early 19th century was the time where individual steps forward became progress, where freedoms became freedom, where revolutions – as in ever-repeating cycles – became the revolution, the thing after which (supposedly) you can never go back to the way things were; it was the time where mankind (ahem) started pulling in one direction.

But I digress, back to the novel. For starters, it becomes obvious rather quickly that Humboldt and Gauss may admire each other but they don't like each other very much. They're completely different, not only as persons; Humboldt is a cold fish, with seemingly almost no emotions or life outside his own research, yet very much an empirist: he's the guy who'll climb a mountain or drink poison to see what happens. Gauss, on the other hand, is a theorist when it comes to science – hates fieldwork, publishes his greatest work at 21 years old based only on working it out with a pen and paper – yet a bitter curmudgeon who can't not live in the world with its women and politicians and (disappointing) children. (Of course, I have no idea exactly how historically correct their characterisations are.)

Likewise, there are two sides to this novel. One (more or less) learnéd historical discourse on, on the one hand, how we construct an image of the world, how we understand it, how science works, and on the other what fame and monomania can do to a person. The other side of the novel is a rather wacky comedy about two scientists, where the humour doesn't work nearly as often as Kehlmann thinks. Now, this is really a genre I like, but compare it to a book like Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, which takes a very similar story (to the point where Mason & Dixon show up in this book) and spins it into something much bigger (some might say crazier). Or Umberto Eco's Island of the Day Before which, sure, has an even flatter plot (not one of Eco's best works) but instead runs rings around Kehlmann when it comes to the historical and scientific and how it makes us what we are/were/will be. Kehlmann parks somewhere between the two and ends up... lukewarm.

While there's a lot of interesting themes here and some of the chapters are quite excellent (the final chapters of Humboldt being toured across Russia like some ageing rock star, in particular, and anything involving his frustrated assistant Bonpland), I can't help feel that this is a much better novel in theory than in practice; like it could have used one more edit to piece it all together – I can see where he wants it to go, but he doesn't quite manage to incorporate BOTH the characters and their achievements. To quote one of the best passages in the novel, here's Gauss' view of the world:

it was unfair and unjust .... a real example of the pitiful arbitrariness of existence, that you were born into a particular time and held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-à-vis the future.

But at the same time, that's sort of the problem. Apart from making them into clowns, Kehlmann doesn't quite seem what to do with these characters. He relates their story but doesn't tell a story of his own. Kehlmann stays superficial, mentions inventions and names and disoveries but that's about it, and in the process polarizes tht two characters to the point where it almost seems like Humboldt's entire character is "the guy who's not Gauss" and the other way around.

Maybe I just expected too much of it. It's not a bad novel, not at all; it's quite enjoyable, it's an easy read, you'll laugh and you might just learn something along the way. But much like human progress wasn't finished by Napoleon, there's a lot more to be found in the world than this.