The Uncertainty Principle
By: Thomas Hoffman

Book Three of the Trilogy: Ghost Words and Puppet Plays

Each volume in the trilogy is a series of interlocking sketches or stories intended to give a view of a period in human history. It is a trilogy about human nature and thought.

The Uncertainty Principle has twenty-seven scenes set in the 17th and 20th centuries. By the 17th century the certainty which went with the authority of rulers, religious dogma and the science of Aristotle and Galen had begun to erode. The so-called Modern Period became a battleground between those who would live with new or tentative answers and those who demanded the certainty of the past.

This third volume begins in 1606 as an ice storm approaches London, and ends in 1990 as a winter storm moves across the center of the USA. The characters include the famous and the obscure. Among the former are Rembrandt, Bashô, Spinoza, the Queen of France and the Empress of China. Among the latter are an aging Nazi, an American PFC, an Iowa farm wife and a child preparing for a play.