BOOK REVIEW : A Pair of Scientists Sit Around and Talk Shop--Brilliantly : DIALOGO<i> by Primo Levi and Tullio Regge, translated by Raymond Rosenthal</i> PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS $9.95, 68 pages

“Big book, big bore,” the Greek Callimachus said. “Dialogo” is a little book--a tiny book, hardly a book at all--and it is anything but boring.

In 68 pages--with wide margins, no less--Primo Levi, who was a chemist as well as a writer, and Tullio Regge, a physicist, conduct an acrobatic conversation that leaps from Robert Oppenheimer to Kurt Godel to Jorge Luis Borges to studying Hebrew to super-string theory to interstellar travel and then some.

Mind you, not that they explore any of these subjects in depth (how could they?), but they do make insightful observations, which is often just as good if not better. Pound for pound, scientists as a group are the cleverest folks around. They know more than the rest of us. Watching them think and hearing them talk is usually a pleasure.

At one point Regge says, “To those who reproach scientists for being too cold, I always answer that a formula is not cold and is not all there is to science. That would be like reducing a doctor’s work to the blood analyses, which really supply the data for an interpretation that goes far beyond. Also, in physics the calculation represents only the point of departure from which one starts in the attempt to go beyond.”

In a sense, in this brief book two scientists start from science and go beyond.

At another point, Levi describes the debt he owed as a writer to his earlier career in chemistry:

“I have had in my hands materials that are not of current use, with properties outside the ordinary, that have served to amplify my language precisely in a technical sense. Thus I have at my disposal an inventory of raw materials, of tesserae for writing, somewhat larger than that possessed by someone who does not have a technical background.

“Moreover, I’ve developed the habit of writing compactly, avoiding the superfluous. Precision and concision, which, so I’m told, are my way of writing, have come to me from my trade as a chemist. And so has the habit of objectivity, of not letting myself be easily deceived by appearances.”

He goes on for a few pages, describing other skills and habits he learned as a chemist that he carried over to the writing trade, and then says, “I must add that the day I left was for me a day of liberation: I thought I was walking on clouds. . . . I spent the day after my resignation strolling through the streets of Turin on a working day: a working day--do you realize what that meant? No more office hours, no more crossing town during the rush hours; and every blessed day, no night calls because a valve has broken or a rainstorm has flooded the cable beds.”

Levi had escaped from the world of telegrams and anger. It’s something for everyone to aspire to. But he didn’t completely escape his demons. In 1987, at 67, Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, committed suicide by throwing himself down a stairwell at his home in Turin.

No one who knew him had an inkling of his depression, and Levi’s death remains a puzzle. Some still insist it was an accident, which seems unlikely. The sparkling conversation-- dialogo --with Regge reproduced here was undertaken for an Italian radio broadcast. If this is indicative of the fare on Italian radio, one can only marvel at the depth of what is available on the airwaves there.

Both men reveal a good deal about themselves in the course of their dialogue. Regge confesses:

“I amuse myself by posing as an expert in areas about which I know absolutely nothing. I find it incredibly easy. All you have to do is find out what the key words are. As an experimental physicist I’m not worth much. One time I got somebody to explain to me what one is supposed to say to a person who builds accelerators. There are a couple of phrases, tune-shift, increasing the injection current, field stability . . . I learned them and one time at a dinner I trotted them out, I went on for 20 minutes.”

To which Levi responds, “Everybody knows that having insight into people is the key to any career.”

This little book will never be confused with “War and Peace,” but it offers a pleasant and revealing interlude. It is festooned with ideas, and though it doesn’t develop them, it lays out some, hints at others, and points the way.

Next: “One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley” by Caroline Alexander (Knopf).