Origines – Trinh Xuan Thuan

Thoughts: Origines was one of the first French-language books I bought, soon after I moved to Montreal following the height of the pandemic.

I generally like Trinh’s writing - it took me about three years to work through Origines, working in fits and starts, during which time I completed two of Trinh’s other books. At his best, notably in the early and middle portions of Origines, Trinh’s writing is quite poetic. (I still often feel sheepish when I find myself in a bookstore or library, leafing through dozens of books in search of something new and interesting before settling on yet another book by Trinh, who has a knack for writing at the right level of detail about topics that interest me)

Origines is not without flaws. While in most sections of the book Trinh makes well-founded statements (as far as I can tell, based on what I know about the subjects he discusses), there was one passage that stood out for its anthropomorphism: near the beginning of Ch. 5, Trinh makes the case that the universe actively seeks to become more complex, which struck me as misguided (the universe can have this tendency, certainly, but I hardly think it’s responsible to say that, say, the universe itself is trying to create the conditions necessary for life to emerge). Whereas Trinh is in his element for the bulk of the book, relaying a generally factual account of the universe’s evolution, the last chapter, “Quel futur?”, reads like a less incisive Homo Deus.

(The notes below are not a summary of the book, but rather raw notes - whatever I thought, at the time, might be worth remembering.)

Trinh Xuan Thuan. 2016. Origines: La nostalgie des commencements. Édition mise à jour. Gallimard.

I - Origine du monde: Des mythes au Big Bang

• 38-39: Greek Philosopher Eudoxus conceived of the universe as having 27 nested spheres. To account for more precise observations, Aristotle proposed that the universe must consist of not 27 but 55 nested spheres. Ptolemy later proposed epicycles - circles embedded in the spheres, around which planets travelled as the spheres slid past each other

II - Origine des galaxies: Les cités de soleils

• 106: To do: learn more about galaxy clusters. Such as the “Great Attractor” - rough translating: The Virgo cluster and the Hydra?+Taurus supercluster are all falling towards a collection of tens of thousands of galaxies know as the “Great Attractor”.
• 118: Why does ordinary matter clump in the middle of galaxies, while dark matter stays in a halo around the galaxy? The current theory is that ordinary matter, through interactions with other ordinary matter, loses energy/momentum and falls toward the centre of the galaxy. Dark matter, which began just as energetic and doesn’t interact with other matter except through gravity, has no way to lose energy, so keeps its momentum and can thus resist falling into the centre of a galaxy.
• 124: “Quasar” is a portmanteau of “quasi” + “star”
• 124: Quasars (light sources driven by matter falling into the black holes at the centres of galaxies) are very efficient at turning matter into energy - whereas stars convert ~0.7% of their mass into energy, 10-20% of matter falling into black holes is converted into energy.

III - Origine des étoiles: Le feu et la lumière

• 176: Red giant stars have remarkably low densities, usually on the order of a thousandth of the density of water.
• 181: White dwarf stars, when in a binary system, can siphon gas off from the star they are paired with, steadily increasing in mass as they do so. When they reach a certain critical mass, fusion reactions are set off, causing them to shine brightly and blow away their outer layers (thus decreasing in mass). This process can repeat dozens to hundreds of times.
• 197: If you approached a black hole in a spaceship, distant observers would see time in your ship slow to a crawl. On the flip side, as you crossed the event horizon, you would see all of eternity outside the black hole play out in an instant.

IV - Origine des planètes: Terres de feu et boules de gaz

V - Origine de la vie: Doubles hélices et exubérance des formes

VI - Origine de la conscience: La magie du cerveau et le miracle de la pensée

• 395: 18th C. French doctor Pierre Cabanis: “Le cerveau sécrète la pensée comme la foie sécrète la bile.”

VII - Quel futur? : Interdépendance et responsabilité universelle