The Human Touch by Michael Frayn

Faber and Faber

Reviewed by RITA CARTER

This review first appeared in The Daily Mail

WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?
It's not so much a big idea as a big question.  Does the known Universe have some real objective existence, or is it all in our heads?. If we weren’t here to observe and describe it would mountains still be big, skies blue, or water wet? Would numbers exist? Would a tree falling in a forest still make a noise……? As the author puts it: “Is the world in one way or another out there, or is it in here? 
 
Michael Frayn is far too modest (and canny) to promise any hitherto unguessed-at solution. Instead he invites us to join him on an “excursion” over this well-charted territory, going “this way and that, without any particular system, wherever a path seems to offer, to get the lie of the land”.
 
It all sounds very leisurely, but if you want to keep up you’ll need a clear head and stout walking boots. His excursion is less like a Sunday afternoon ramble than a brain-stretching yomp through some of the most treacherous areas of philosophy.
 
Frayn starts by examining our view of the Universe (a muddle) then moves on to what we can actually know about it (not much) and how we can know we know (we can’t). He looks at scientific laws (dodgy) and the stuff they relate to (weirder the closer you look.) All the while he urges us to ask: are we making all this up, from nothing? Or are we merely discovering it? Then it is on to the thorny issues of Truth, Choice, Morality, Language and Understanding.
 
 Finally, in a neat recursive sweep, reminiscent of his cleverly structured plays and novels, Frayn deposits us back where we started – gazing out at the Universe in various degrees of awe, wonder and confusion.
  
SO WHAT’S NEW?
Far from being new, Frayn acknowledges that what we are dealing with here is the world’s oldest mystery - one which may have no solution at all. “In the end” says Frayn, “ the world has no form or substance without us to provide them, and you and I have no form or substance without the world to provide them in its turn. We are supporting the globe on our shoulders, like Atlas, and we are standing on the globe that we are supporting….”
 
HOW READER FRIENDLY IS IT?
 “The Human Touch” is one of those doorstop tomes that Grand Old Men  tend to write to cap their glorious careers – the summation of a lifetime’s wisdom. Such books can be windy and pompous but Frayn is too good a writer and too sharp a thinker to allow that. Once you get going he keeps you up to speed with clever analogies, witty asides and a direct, conversational style that flatters you into thinking you knew it all along. Those who want to dig deeper are provided with copious notes and references.
 
BOFFIN-RATING
 Frayn plays up his lack of formal expertise, both in science and philosophy, calling himself just a “thoughtful tourist”. In fact his previous works – from the intellectual roller-coaster “Copenhagen” to his laugh-out-loud comedies reveal a lifelong engagement with the questions he now confronts head-on in this book.  His qualification is the best there is: the possession of an extraordinarily lucid, penetrating, and original mind. Let’s hope this is not its final literary product.

© Rita Carter 2007 - www.ritacarter.co.uk