The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe

by Michael Frayn

Overview

What do we really know? What are we in relation to the world around us? Here, the acclaimed playwright and novelist takes on the great questions of his career—and of our lives


Humankind, scientists agree, is an insignificant speck in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would there be numbers if there were no one to count them? Would the universe even be vast, without the fact of our smallness to give it scale?
With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work of philosophy sets out to make sense of our place in the scheme of things. Our contact with the world around us, Michael Frayn shows, is always fleeting and indeterminate, yet we have nevertheless had to fashion a comprehensible universe in which action is possible. But how do we distinguish our subjective experience from what is objectively true and knowable? Surveying the spectrum of philosophical concerns from the existence of space and time to relativity and language, Frayn attempts to resolve what he calls "the oldest mystery": the world is what we make of it. In which case, though, what are we?

All of Frayn's novels and plays have grappled with these essential questions; in this book he confronts them head-on.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466829411
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/22/2008
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Michael Frayn is the author of ten novels, including the best-selling Headlong, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice selection and a Booker Prize finalist, and Spies, which received the Whitbread Fiction Award. Michael Frayn is also the author of My Father's Fortune: A Life, The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe, Democracy: A Play, A Landing on the Sun: A Novel, The Copenhagen Papers: An Intrigue and The Trick of It: A Novel. He has also written fifteen plays, among them Noises Off and Copenhagen, which won three Tony Awards in 1999. He lives just south of London.

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. He has written seventeen plays, including Noises Off, Copenhagen, and Democracy, translated Chekhov's last four plays, and adapted his first as Wild Honey. His screenplays include Clockwise, starring John Cleese, and among his eleven novels are The Tin Men, Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong, Spies, and Skios. Collections of articles include Collected Columns, Stage Directions, and Travels with a Typewriter. He has also published two philosophical works, Constructions and The Human Touch, and a memoir, My Father's Fortune. His most recent publications are three collections of short entertainments, Matchbox Theatre, Pocket Playhouse, and Magic Mobile. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.

Editorial Reviews

British playwright and novelist Frayn has nursed a serious interest in philosophy since studying it at Cambridge in the 1950s, a fact that won't surprise fans of the writer best known for his 1982 farce, Noises Off, and award-winning 1998 drama, Copenhagen. This bold, original spin on the role of the human imagination in the construction of reality reflects the same robust intellectual curiosity, keen powers of observation and ingenious sense of humor that characterize all his work. Ranging over science, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and linguistics-with a grasp that would be admirable in a professional but is astounding in a self-confessed amateur-Frayn rigorously exposes the human scaffolding propping up what we like to see as a detached, neatly ordered universe. Gazing both outwardly at the indeterminate cosmos suggested by relativity and quantum mechanics, and inwardly at the slippery constructions of consciousness and our sense of self, he focuses on the narrative compulsion that arises from the continual "traffic" between human beings and their ever-changing, ephemeral surroundings. Frayn's dogged unraveling of determinist assumptions and the occasionally mind-bending minutiae of theories, arguments and counterarguments can get taxing, despite lucid and witty prose. But Frayn's ecstatic embrace of a human-made universe is a fascinatingly persuasive ride. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

London-based novelist, playwright, and self-proclaimed amateur philosopher Frayn (Headlong) tackles the big questions of human understanding in this profound work. Beginning with a description of the continual "traffic" between humans and the universe, Frayn shapes a cohesive introduction to philosophy that includes elements of science, determinism, physics, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, and epistemology. Throughout, he makes great use of articulate and witty examples to supply answers (or, more often, lines of thought that provide paths to satisfying nonanswers) without leaving the general reader too far behind. In the end, Frayn succeeds in peeling back the layers of both the external and the internal thought processes of humans, and he conveys an illuminating proposition that establishes human intellect as a distinct, necessary mediator of our universe. At times the content is overly tedious, but given the subject matter and depth, this is easily overlooked. Recommended for medium and large public and academic collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ10/15/06.]
—Jason Moore

Library Journal

A vade mecum for head-scratchers by the multifaceted Frayn (The Copenhagen Papers, 2001, etc.), whose philosophical concerns are notably many and well attested in his body of work. Humans were born to gaze at the stars and wonder, and when we do, most of us tend to be humbled by the vastness of the universe. But humans shouldn't be daunted, counsels Frayn; instead, we should take courage from the fact that "the world has no form or substance without you and me to provide them, and you and I have no form or substance without the world to provide them in its turn." The technical complexities of the Bishop Berkeley/tree-falling-in-the-forest argument and its counters are legion, but Frayn does a very nice job of adumbrating, observing along the way such legendary trip-ups as the principle of uncertainty and observational distortion and revisiting the questions that used to keep college students awake at night: How do we know that we know? Do we ever really make decisions? Why do we say that there's a present when the present is already the past? Why is it that "the conscious subject that gives meaning to the objective universe cannot give meaning to itself"? Frayn takes clear pleasure in considering questions that make the heads of lesser mortals spin and pulsate, and he takes leisurely detours that sometimes lead to the neat destruction of philosophical positions and schools of thought; his dismantling of Chomskyan transformational grammar, for instance, is a masterpiece of gentle subversion, in keeping with Frayn's overall playful and user-friendly approach. He spins out some nice apothegms, too: "The decisiveness of decisions is as elusive as the decisions themselves. It recedes like theintentionality of intention." Indeed, and though the universe may spin merrily along without us, it requires us to interpret it-or, if nothing else, finds it congenial that we do so. An inviting introduction to modern cosmology and philosophy with no prerequisites other than the willingness to entertain counterfactuals, imponderables and leaps of faith. Nicely done.

Kirkus Reviews

The target audience: anyone who enjoys gaping at the complexities of existence. The topic: everything . . . Fantastic.” —Entertainment Weekly (grade: A)

“Michael Frayn's exultant prose entices and ultimately overwhelms you. Reading his arguments, I felt as though I were floating down a warm river, caught up in its playful, whirling eddies. . . . Beautifully written.” —Los Angeles Times

“Immense erudition . . . and more than a dash of wit . . . What makes The Human Touch so rewarding is the subtlety and humor with which he examines 'the great mutual balancing act.'” —The New York Times

“His command of current scholarship in physics and biology is impressive; his discussion of psychological issues is discerning. . . . Witty and ingratiating style.” —The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“An inviting introduction to modern cosmology and philosophy with no prerequisites other than the willingness to entertain counterfactuals, imponderables, and leaps of faith. Nicely done.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Absolutely riveting . . . Read it, and you may come to look at the world differently.” —Newsday

“Erudite, imaginative, funny, and dazzlingly clever . . . [Frayn] unbolts, chapter by chapter, the fabric of the universe.” —The Sunday Times (London)

From the Publisher