Translation Rights TQE / Intellectual Enjoyment

From the stimulating title one can already begin to suspect that this is not a dry essay about the acquirement of knowledge because, just as it occurs with all books by this author, this one too is far from the chain of unconnected ideas and the common uses of scientific thought. In the first part of the book, “the theory”, Wagensberg builds a solid conceptual scheme beginning with the basis of the definitions of the fundamental terms – stimulus, conversation, comprehension - which also limit the phases of the acquirement of knowledge and its associated mental enjoyment, until he reaches the keystone that closes and upholds the building. The keystone is intellectual enjoyment, which occurs during the exact moment when a new comprehension takes place. This concept holds a suspicion – which is also a hope -, that there is no true knowledge without enjoyment. This first part is complemented by substantial critical reflections in which the author applies the conceptual scheme to the fields of creation and education.

The second part, “the practice”, gathers sixty-three articles – “stories and reflections on the everyday life of a scientist” grouped in seven families. These texts apply the issues of stimulus, conversation, comprehension and intuition to a great variety of cases and situations: trips and dinners, lectures and conferences… Any circumstance can be an ideal one for intellectual enjoyment. Vivid stories, full of humor and erudition, where anecdote and reflection feed off each other in an amazing game that will undoubtedly amuse the reader.

Jorge Wagensberg (Barcelona, 1948), Doctor of Physics, is professor of Irreversible Process Theory at the University of Barcelona. He not only investigates and disseminates science, but is also a dynamic promoter of the debate of ideas, which has achieved him Catalonia’s National Prize for Scientific Thought and Culture, among other awards. He is the director of our Metatemas collection and is now responsible for the Scientific and Environmental Area of the “la Caixa” Foundation, after having directed the scientific museum CosmoCaixa, a reference for science museums around the world. He is the author of a dozen books and of many works of investigation on thermodynamics, mathematics, biophysics, microbiology, paleontology, entomology, scientific museology, and the philosophy of science, as well as of journalistic articles on a number of different topics. We have published six wokrs, among them Si la naturaleza es la respuesta, ¿cuál era la pregunta?, La rebelión de las formas, A más cómo menos por qué and El gozo intelectual.