Certainty: Is there anything more seductive to those of us so hungry for…what exactly? Is it knowledge and wisdom? Or is it more often for affirmation that what we think and believe, even insist, is the truth. In the year 1900, Lord Kelvin took the podium at the British Association of Science to announce: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” At the same time, writes Maria Poplova in her new book, Figuring, young Albert Einstein is “incubating the ideas…that would irreversibly transform our fundamental conception of reality. […]