ÒÁÈ˾þÃ

“Good books always shock us at some level,” says ´¡±ô²ú±ð°ù³Ù-³¢Ã¡²õ³ú±ôó-µþ²¹°ù²¹²úá²õ¾±, professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and author of Linked: The new science of networks (Perseus, 2002). He’s grappling with The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq (Vintage, 2001). It presents a world that is just as repulsive as it is natural, he says. “I could not read the book continuously. I was so repelled by it that sometimes I would put it down and take it up only days or weeks later.” The question posed by Houellebecq cannot leave any scientist unmoved: What is the road to happiness – sex or science?…