Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has worked in Italy and the USA, and currently works in France. His work is mainly in the field of quantum gravity, where he is among the founders of the loop quantum gravity theory. He has also worked in the history and philosophy of science. He collaborates regularly with several Italian newspapers, in particular the cultural supplements of Il Sole 24 Ore and La Repubblica.
There's good news and bad news. The good news is that The Order of Time does what A Brief History of Time seemed to promise but didn't cover: it attempts to explore what time itself is. The bad news is that Carlo Rovelli does this in such a flowery and hand-waving fashion that, though the reader may get a brief feeling that they understand what he's writing about, any understanding rapidly disappears like the scent of a passing flower (the style is catching).
It doesn't help either that the book is in translation so some scientific terms are mangled, or that Rovelli has a habit of self-contradiction. Time and again (pun intended) he tells us time doesn't exist, then makes use of it. For example, at one point within a page of telling us of time's absence Rovelli writes of events that have duration and a 'when' - both meaningless terms without time. At one point he speaks of a world without time, elsewhere he says 'Time and space are real phenomena.' The difficulty I think Rovelli faces is that he uses the common physicist's approach of talking of a model as if it were reality.
The wofflyness often gets in the way of understanding. For example, when talking about the second law of thermodynamics and entropy, he claims (I think - it's difficult to tell exactly what he is claiming) that the only reason we perceive the arrow of time from the increase of entropy is the way we label things. The implication is that, for example, the atoms in your body are no more ordered than the atoms in a scrambled mess - it's just that it's easier to see the order in your body because on the scale of atoms everything is blurred, but if we could see every atom exactly, whatever configuration they would be in would itself be unique. It sounds impressive, but skips over the way that fundamental quantum particles are indistinguishable. The arrangement of the cloud of atoms is only unique if you can tell one hydrogen atom (say) from another.
This is rather a shame, as Rovelli covers a considerable amount in what is a distinctly short book (though, thankfully, you get more for your money than in Seven Brief Lessons). Amongst other things, Rovelli passingly covers the special and general theories of relativity, thermodynamics and, of course, loop quantum gravity. And it's particularly frustrating because his attempt to put across the idea that it鈥檚 better to model reality in terms of events rather than things is a very powerful one which isn't often seen in popular science - but the message could easily be lost in the confusion. You come away with very little information - far more that rapidly disappearing odour.
I've no doubt this book should do well for those who are impressed that a physicist can refer to Proust. But I like a popular science book with significantly more meat in it, rather than vague impressions.
Before I begin my usual segues, I have to say this is a magnificent book. Though I read it three years ago, I return to it whenever I need to de-clog my brain! ***
One of the self-appointed gurus of the seventies (who at one point was the leader of a cult headquartered on a Pacific island - you may remember him) used to bash 鈥榮cientism鈥� as if there was no tomorrow.
Many of us addled hippies agreed back then.
Although I had a nagging feeling he was just in it for the glitz, glam and dineros. And I was right.
Yes, his was a driven life.
He probably never found a worthwhile moment of pure peace in his short life. I think Rovelli shares that blind spot, as do so many of us harried moderns.
Love seems foreign to him. Rovelli, in fact, puts the very human phenomenon of Particularity - the essence of falling for a Special Someone - down to simple physical entropy.
Slowing down!
Now, how can we love someone if not for their particularity? 鈥業 love her as I love no other鈥� is the Essence of a man鈥檚 love.
Isn鈥檛 calling it entropy downright reductionist? I guess maybe science and emotional dryness go well together!
Nevertheless, for all his glaring lack of simple humanity, he cuts a swashbuckling figure as a physicist. You just don鈥檛 see that too often! Or someone who explains complex theories so clearly.
Hearing Rovelli talk, you can grasp Einstein鈥檚 thoughts about time as if for the first time (try my Kindle notes). His language is clear, concise, readable, and filled with colourful analogy.
He must be as revered by his students as the legendary American physicist Richard Feynman was idolized by his.
It鈥檚 a wonderful book.
It puts a simple act like maybe walking to the store into a universal framework.
I think, reading it, you鈥檒l have little problem seeing how vastly the Theory of Relativity has altered our lives, in easy-to-understand language.
And one famous scientist can teach us more about life than any hippie guru ever could!
Take two. Time has swallowed my review. My first one anyway.
I wish I could take back the time, do it over, but entropy hit GR (or at least my internet connection) and something less than the total heat-death of the universe made me realign my perceptions of reality and time.
Oh, wait. That was this book!
Half historical science, some equations, the theoretical underpinnings of quantum loop theory, the role of entropy and heat in the determination of what makes TIME, and half philosophy and what makes our consciousness drag together all the underpinnings of the blur we call reality.
Together, this is physics and metaphysics. The Greeks got it pretty damn close, but then, so did St. Augustine and Heidegger and Kant. Is it all relative? Yep. Thank you, Einstein. Every point on the curve of our universe has its own particular Time. Now is meaningless since the relationship between every point can never intersect with the others. It's all past or future and THAT is all perception. Time is change, too, and not to put too fine a point on it, all we can really do is put a rate on it, never carve it up into its smallest particle.
So what about consciousness? It's all interpretation of what we see, baby. The stratifications of what we work by are just an approximation and it says nothing about how a child sees a day versus how an old person sees it.
Carlo Rovelli combines the two and does an admirable job of trying to reconcile it all.
Impossible, you say? Possibly, but he also gets 9 out of 10 points for style. :) Beautifully written.
Time has always been an enigma 鈥� with philosophers and even scientists calling it an illusion. And, Carlo Rovelli tells us that it is increasingly appearing to be so. A topic which without doubt captures your attention & is very intellectually stimulating. It would have been an exceptional book, but in parts struggles between being a book for everybody vs being a book of serious science. I have observed many science books do run into this issue 鈥� and it is quite obviously a difficult balance to achieve.
The start gets you immediately hooked with the description of how time moves slower at lower altitudes than higher altitudes. When you fall, you are actually tending to go towards the place where time moves slower. The advances in our understanding of time makes for very interesting reading with the big breakthrough coming with Einstein鈥檚 theory of relativity. Einstein鈥檚 concept of the spacetime fabric affected by mass as well as speed completely changed how time was viewed. This also brings into question what we really mean by present 鈥� which really holds only here and is highly localized. The present somewhere else 鈥� on a different planet for instance is known to us much later and may mean nothing.
It makes sense for the universe to be seen as a series of events, rather than as objects interacting with each other. Objects are a logical outcome of events and quite possibly so is time - a result of a change of entropy rather than something which passes by objects. There has been progress in creating theories & models of the universe without time. The Loop Quantum theory is discussed 鈥� which Carlo is personally involved with as well.
The later part of the book discusses the practical uses of time 鈥� emerging out of a universe which does not really need time to explain it.
This is a book which will kindle your curiosity to think and read more about time theories. There are vague & incomplete references to Vedanta & Lord Shiva from Hindu philosophy. Despite the inconsistent treatment 鈥� oscillating between simple language and more detail, this is a book to read, for the fascinating topic it explores.
It is not a big book and will not take you too much time to read. Oh well, it will not be that easy to banish time from my mind yet though 馃槉
A book that makes you think about the real order of things, from the micro- to the macroscopic level, and how a familiar, seemingly simple thing as time is much more complicated and complex than one can imagine The choice is between forcing the description of the world so that it adapts to our intuition, or learning instead to adapt our intuition to what we have discovered about the world.
Wether is a very good physicist I can hardly judge, but how he communicates his vision of time and what science knows about the subject, clearly shows he is a very good writer. In we are presented with the complexity of time when we no longer see it on the human/planetary scale, but start to think of what relativity and the upper limit of the speed of light means for wether something influences other events. Nothing in nature, in terms of fundamental laws, apparently explicitly needs time. We as living, changing creatures, who can perceive cause and effect, do. This elicits questions about wether time as a phenomena is not much more subjective than we normally think. A fascinating book that makes the reader think of preconceptions and common perspectives on the world, well written and short while tackling complex subjects.
Quotes: Children grow up and discover that the world is not as it seemed from within the four walls of their homes. Humankind as a whole does the same.
The choice is between forcing the description of the world so that it adapts to our intuition, or learning instead to adapt our intuition to what we have discovered about the world.
This is the way in which we have traditionally conceived of time: counting the ways in which things change.
Time is the measure of change: if nothing changes, there is no time.
Time has loosened into a network of relations that no longer holds together as a coherent canvas.
We therefore describe the world as it happens, not as it is. We understand the world in its becoming, not in its being. Things in themselves are only events that for a while are monotonous.
Everything in the world becomes blurred when seen close up.
Time is ignorance
There is no special variable 鈥榯ime鈥�, there is no difference between past and future, there is no spacetime.
When we cannot formulate a problem with precision, it is often not because the problem is profound: it鈥檚 because the problem is false.
I suspect that these Carlo Rovelli books are popular because they are short and imaginative! The first half of The Order of Time was clear and thought-provoking. But the second half went a little off the rails and I'm not sure it all even made sense. (His science is sound, I assume, but what about his metaphysical speculations ?) My mind kept wandering as I was lulled by Benedict Cumberbatch's voice (which reminded me of Neil Gaiman's hypnotic audiobook narrations). I amused myself by imagining Cumberbatch not comprehending a single word of it, while still pulling off a marvelous performance.
It rules over each and every one of us, but is there any greater mystery in life than time? What even is time?
Carlo Rovelli sets out to explain just that question in his latest book, "The Order of Time". Rovelli's explanation of time isn't always clear - there were many moments where I lost the thread - but it is beautiful. For a theoretical physicist, Rovelli is wonderfully poetic. It certainly helps that the audiobook is narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, whose deeply rich voice lends Rovelli's words added impact. As a result, this is one of the few books that's actually better listened to.
Just imagine Cumberbatch reading the following:
"Things in themselves are only events that, for a while, are monotonous. But only before returning to dust... the absence of time does not mean, therefore, that everything is frozen and unmoving, it means that the incessant happening that wearies the world is not ordered along a timeline, is not measured by a gigantic tic-tocking... it is a boundless and disorderly network of quantum events. The world is more like Naples than Singapore. If by "time" we mean nothing more than happening, then everything is time. There is only that which exists in time."
That's beautiful, even if I don't quite fully understand it.
Rovelli also quotes a beautiful passage by Hugo von Hofmannsthal from the famous aria in Richard Strauss' opera, "Der Rosenkavelier". It's an ode to the passing of time, and it's one of the most somber passages I've ever heard. It's titled "Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar ding", in English, "Time Is Weird".
"I remember a little girl, but how can that be? Once I was that little girl, and then I became an old woman. If God wills it so, why allow me to see it? Why doesn't he hide it from me? Everything is a mystery. Such a deep mystery. I feel the fragility of things in time. From the bottom of my heart, I feel we should cling to nothing. Everything slips through our fingers. All that we seek to hold onto dissolves. Everything vanishes like mist and dreams. Time is a strange thing. When we don't need it, it is nothing. Then suddenly, there is nothing else. It is everywhere around us, also within us. It seeps into our faces. It seeps into the mirror. Runs through my temples. Between you and I, it runs silently like an hourglass. Sometimes I feel it flowing inexorably, sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and stop all the clocks."
Like time itself, I often felt the words of Rovelli's "The Order of Time" vanishing from my mind nearly as soon as I read them. Such beautiful words, even if they left me far too quickly.
"We are stories, contained within the twenty complicated centimeters behind our eyes, lines drawn by traces left by the (re)mingling together of things in the world, and oriented towards predicting events in the future, toward the direction of increasing entropy, in a rather particular corner of this immense, chaotic universe." - Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time
An interesting short exploration of time as deconstructed (crumbled), shown to not exist except as relationships, and rebuilt through some theoretical poetry that uses psychology, theoretical physics, poetry, and perspective to paint a sense of what time (as we experience) might just be. I do like Dr. Rovelli. I don't even mind if a lot of what he's saying is theoretical (part 2) and speculative (parts 3). It is poetry and even if he isn't right, or physics or science shows a different path, his exploration is beautiful and revelatory. I wish I had a more complicated understanding of Quantum Gravity so Section 2 made more sense. I seemed to grab some of it, but I know I'm grabbing a tail of something I've only seen at the edge of my perception.
Q: Why do we remember the past and not the future? Do we exist in time, or does time exist in us? What does it really mean to say that time 鈥減asses鈥�? What ties time to our nature as persons, to our subjectivity? What am I listening to when I listen to the passing of time? (c) Q: ... the book becomes a fiery magma of ideas, sometimes illuminating, sometimes confusing. If you decide to follow me, I will take you to where I believe our knowledge of time has reached: up to the brink of that vast nocturnal and star-studded ocean of all that we still don鈥檛 know. (c) Q: The ability to understand something before it鈥檚 observed is at the heart of scientific thinking. (c)
The entropy of a neutrino is not a common discussion. Nor is how all celestial bodies orbit around a hot massive entity that blasts its' photons or immortal neutrinos to those planets in motion. Orbits are quite ordered and predictable. The movement of things and the construct of time is a poetic undertaking that Rovelli pens. He is the founder of the theory of loop quantum gravity and author of "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics." What we think is the present, past or future may be considered events--like humans.
Much time is needed to contemplate the concepts in "The Order of Time." Additionally, consultations with physicists catalyze comprehension for they have a gifted way of looking at the universe. They encourage questions like why time seems to move slower or faster in different locations (mountain vs. beach). This is not a book that may be consumed quickly---its like a very hot cup of tea that needs time to assimilate. You may try to drink it quickly, yet be prepared for the consequences of such. Why is there no variable for time? What is the ratio of a hot photon to its "cold" companions? Consultant Physicists Jediah (ASH) & C.A.R. (USC) and CH. Sending my thanks and appreciation.
"We are for ourselves in large measure what we see and have seen ourselves reflected back to us by our friends, our loves, and our enemies.鈥� 鈥擟arlo Rovelli (Theoretical Physicist)
Can there be a fundamental granularity of life? How do blurry ideas transform into a crisp reality that has a mathematical dimension to its existence. As color relates to frequency and also the same could be assumed of spectrum of light (Newton studies). Quanta can be thought of as energy packets. German Heisenberg was twenty-five (like Einstein) when he brings about to existence the equations of quantum mechanics. If we can endear a handsome electron to be in existence---by way of a soft, perfumed and mellifluous collision on a silky base with pearls jiggling, butterflies fluttering and some heat being released into the field---surely we can imagine how the many fields exist yet by their limitation do we gain velocity. Not an easy read, yet worth the investment of time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Don't be fooled - this book is not an attempt to explain time but to assert the singular reality of symmetrical and relativistic time as viewed by physicists. Rovelli's attempt to explain away asymmetrical thermodynamic-entropic time, otherwise known as the arrow of time and with it, the whole of biology, ecology, economics, and complex systems by telling us 鈥渢ime is ignorance,鈥� "it's all a blur" and it鈥檚 a 鈥渨orld without time鈥� - his discounting of our experience of past, future, and the direction of time, of evolution, growth, decay鈥� that what amounts to the entirety of human experience is nothing but 鈥渟ubjective phenomenology鈥� or is due to the ignorance of human perception is both arrogant and anti-science.
To ignore the work of thousands of scientists and researchers around the world who've established the realities of chaos, complexity, nonlinear systems, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics in multiple fields of science and assert that their view of time is somehow not real, some illusion or form of ignorance, is classic 鈥渙ur field is the only real one鈥� physics arrogance. Such a view works against the goal of science to produce a coherent system of thought across many domains. But make no mistake, between mathematical physics folks and thermodynamics folks exists a kind of Scalar War鈥攖he war of what scale is truly real. This is the battle of micro -v macro, simple -v complex, of systems of small numbers -v those of large numbers. To the rest of science Rovelli is saying: 鈥淧ay no attention to your blurred macroscopic experience, the microscopic is all that matters. Forget about the laws of large numbers and systems with many trillions of interacting parts 鈥� that鈥檚 all just a blurred vision of the world.鈥� This is the war in science between the age old God's-eye view and the emerging situated-view of biological observers (see ref. to below).
Corroborating this bitter divide, a top scientist in the field of complex quantum systems recently told me (Mar2024), "The disagreement about whether or not there is an 鈥渁rrow of time鈥� in nature is real and bitter. Grown scientists with opposing views refuse to speak to each other because of it."
The Order of Time comes across as a last-ditch attempt to breathe life into the deterministic worldview of mathematical physics in the face of the contemporary view of emergence, probability, instability, nonlinearity, complexity, chaos, and irreversibility - a kind of marketing ploy to convince the public that the old view of reductionist physics still reigns supreme over all else. In this book Rovelli represents an old guard of physicists who are unable to embrace the scientific revolution that has engulfed their science and culture, the revolution that is represented by complex systems science and its cousins in virtually every field other than particle physics. The question is can we finally let go of the reductionist 鈥減rimacy of the microscopic鈥� and embrace a more humanistic view of time that includes the realities of macroscopic phenomena, realities that have far more relevance to human experience?
Check it out for yourself from the folks at Systems Innovation YouTube channel. There you will find hundreds of outstanding video courses on complex systems and related phenomena.
Physics still matters of course, but not at the expense of the rest of science. Maybe the arrow of time as understood in the General Relativity block universe conception is globally relative and only locally real, but we need some conception that includes the meso-biological with both the micro-quantum and the macro-cosmological scales. A complete understanding of time is still one of the great unsolved problems in science. But explaining away the most important aspect of it as Rovelli does in this book is not a way forward.
If you want to get more familiar with the perspectives on time in complex systems and the emerging worldview in the sciences, the above videos or the following booklist (from over five decades of research) are excellent:
This list is but a minuscule representation of research in nonlinear systems, chaos, complexity which are in the process of shaping a diversity of fields from fluid dynamics to macroeconomics. A longer list of nontechnical books in these areas can be found in 欧宝娱乐 lists entitled "Complexity" and "complex-systems."
To use the reductionist physicist鈥檚 own favorite quip on the nature of reality, Rovelli鈥檚 book is nothing but a desperate publicity ploy to maintain the power and legitimacy of a limited and arguably inhuman worldview. An outstanding presentation of what underlies the war in science that Rovelli so embodies in this book is the recent (2024) book by astrophysicist Adam Frank, theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, and philosopher Evan Thompson, . I cannot recommend it highly enough. No book exemplifies this blind spot, God's-eye view discounting of human experience more than The Order of Time.
To be clear, what鈥檚 dying is obviously not physics but the Platonist metaphysics underlying contemporary mathematical physics that has dominated natural science. Rovelli is not alone in wrestling with the fly in the ointment of physics that time represents. Anyone who tells you irreversible time is merely an illusion is also telling you to discount your experience and is stuck in the old paradigm that is fighting to maintain its hegemony. If time isn't real as Rovelli contends, then you've got problem with your science, not your experience.
Non ci siamo, no. E' il primo libro del "fenomeno" Rovelli che leggo, ma non mi ha coinvolto, se non nelle ultime pagine, quando non si parla di fisica, ma di filosofia, di letteratura, di religione... E' sicuramente colpa della mia ignoranza nella fisica ed i suoi principi, purtroppo ci sono stati dei capitoli in cui non ho capito nulla (es. la teoria dei loop, l'entropia...).
The final one of my three short books this week was a recommendation from my late , who was impressed by Rovelli's ability to communicate difficult scientific concepts to a lay audience and felt it would help us to understand the foundations of his own mathematical interests.
The book is an ambitious attempt to explain how ideas of time have been refined to accommodate the needs of modern physics, and for me it was mostly successful, though at times I got a little lost by the arguments. On its own that would be a dry subject, but there is plenty of more personal reflection, and a little poetry (the epigraphs are mostly from Horace's odes).
My first read of #scienceseptember (2019) was a bit of a mind blowing experience, with physics meeting philosophy for a discussion of time. I barely grasped the concepts that were already dumbed down for a layperson - the absence of a "present," how time and entropy relate, equations without time, etc. But I did meet my goal of reading more than just nature stuff for the theme!
"In order to exit from a black hole, you would need to move toward the present rather than toward the future!...This is impossible."
"More than a hundred years have passed since we learned that the 'present of the universe' does not exist."
"The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events."
"We understand the world in its becoming, not in its being."
"[The world] is a boundless and disorderly network of quantum events."
"What causes events to happen in the world, what writes its history, is the irresistible mixing of all things going from the few ordered configurations to the countless disordered ones."
"Music can occur only in time, but if we are always in the present moment, how is it possible to hear it?"
"We are stories, ... lines drawn by traces left of the (re)mingling together of things in the world, ... in a rather particular corner of this immense, chaotic universe."
"Time is suffering."
A few thoughts I had - this whole "blurring" idea feels like an explanation you throw at something when you just don't understand it yet. I'd send those physicists back to think more about this.
Rovelli also talks about how the only way we identify past vs. future is we can see traces of the past. But what if it's just that our brains don't understand what we see from the future without that particular framing?
Physicists calling time an illusion is not a new idea. Julian Barbour, in his 1999 book argued for the same hypothesis. Contrary to this idea, physicist Lee Smolin proposed that time is real. He suggested that laws of physics are not fixed in the universe but evolve over time. The principle argument in support of his theory is that mathematical models provide an abstraction of reality and ignore time dimension. Carlo Rovelli observes that since theory of general relativity assumes spacetime is smooth and continuous, and quantum theory describes matter and energy in discrete quantities which implies that spacetime is also quantized. i.e. they exist in discrete quanta. These two realities are unconnected because quantum physics cannot deal with the continuous spacetime, and general relativity cannot reconcile with quantization of space and time. In fact, space, time and gravity are suggested as emergent properties of a system. Emergent properties are not identical with, reducible to, or deducible from the other physical properties. Examples include, temperature, pressure, viscosity, spacetime and gravity. Therefore, the author concludes that Isaac Newton鈥檚 picture of a universally ticking clock, and Albert Einstein鈥檚 relativistic space-time that bends so that local times differ depending on one鈥檚 relative speed or proximity to a mass is an over simplification. According to Rovelli, the time; the sequences of past, present and future is an emergent phenomenon of thermodynamics.
One of the principal arguments Rovelli advances is the Wheeler-De Witt equation which describes quantum gravity, but it has no time variable associated with it. Quantum mechanics and general relativity, taken together, imply the possibility of quantum superposition of different spacetimes. But the Wheeler-de Witt equation, which is based on a wave function 唯[q] over geometries offers new perspectives.
In this book, Rovelli often muses about metaphysics, poetry and spirituality but fails to convince the reader that his idea is on the right track. It reminds me of Einstein鈥檚 famous saying that 鈥淕od does not play dice,鈥� Which makes me believe that if time is an illusion, then space would also be an illusion. There is a beauty and symmetry in the universe, and time alone could not be an illusion without space. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Mars explorer suggest that this universe is a computer simulation on someone鈥檚 computer. And black hole physics suggests that the information in 3D world could be described in 2D dimension, in fact reality is a hologram. In quantum reality, the wave functions of a reality must be collapsed by physical observation (conscious observers), until then the reality is smeared out in spacetime. In fact, reality is in the eyes of beholder. Taken together, reality of matter and energy in spacetime could be an illusion (Maya), as interpreted by the Vedanta School of Hindu philosophy.
I might come back to this, but for now I just leave two quotes.
1. The summary of the author鈥檚 argument (which is beautifully explained, expended and substantiated in this book):
鈥淚n the end, therefore, instead of many possible times we can speak only of a single time: the time of our experience: uniform, universal and ordered. This is the approximation of an approximation of an approximation of a description of the world made from our particular perspective as human beings who are dependent on the growth of entropy, anchored to the flowing of time. We for whom, as Ecclesiastes1 has it, there is a time to be born and a time to die.鈥�
2. An extract from Hofmannsthal鈥檚 Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose or The Rose-Bearer), the one of many literary gems quoted throughout:
鈥淚 remember a little girl 鈥� But how can that be 鈥� Once I was that little Resi, and then one day I became an old woman? 鈥� If God wills it so, why allow me to see it? Why doesn鈥檛 he hide it from me? Everything is a mystery, such a deep mystery 鈥� I feel the fragility of things in time. From the bottom of my heart, I feel we should cling to nothing. Everything slips through our fingers. All that we seek to hold on to dissolves. Everything vanishes, like mist and dreams 鈥� Time is a strange thing. When we don鈥檛 need it, it is nothing. Then, suddenly, there is nothing else. It is everywhere around us. Also within us. It seeps into our faces. It seeps into the mirror, runs through my temples 鈥� Between you and I it runs silently, like an hourglass. Oh, Quin Quin. Sometimes I feel it flowing inexorably. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and stop all the clocks 鈥︹€�
We can talk about physics, but the poetry does not need to be talked about.
"Ci sono tanti modi diversi in cui diciamo che una cosa esiste: una legge, un sasso, una nazione, una guerra, un personaggio di una commedia, un dio di una religione a cui non aderiamo, un grande amore, un numero...ciascuno di questi enti esiste ed 猫 reale in un senso diverso dagli altri.[...] Chiedersi in generale cosa esiste o cosa 猫 reale significa solo chiedersi come vogliamo usare un verbo o un aggettivo. Si tratta di una domanda grammaticale, non una domanda sulla natura."
Must-read pre ka啪d茅ho nedochv铆木neho 膷loveka. Garantujem v谩m, 啪e ke膹 nabud煤ce op盲钮 niekam doraz铆te s polhodinov媒m me拧kan铆m a vyzliekaj煤c si kab谩t za膷nete vysvet木ova钮, 啪e pod木a Boltzmanna za to m么啪e n铆zka entropia minulosti, ktor谩 n谩m umo啪艌uje pou啪铆va钮 pojem pr铆膷iny ako efekt铆vny koncept a e拧te trochu zad媒chane dod谩te, 啪e v 膷isto mechanickom syst茅me by jednosmern媒 膷as identifikovan媒 kauzalitou neexistoval, bud煤 v拧etci 膹akova钮 bohu, 啪e ste nepri拧li sk么r.
Trovo meraviglioso il modo in cui quest'uomo riesce ad intrecciare scienza e filosofia. I suoi scritti mi stimolano e mi danno moltissimo su cui riflettere; non solo per quanto riguarda la materia di studio, ma anche a livello umano.
Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and stop all the clocks.
The temporal structure of the world is different from the na茂ve image that we have of it.
That some of our most pervasive and important concepts are still so poorly understood鈥攖ime, consciousness鈥攆ascinates me. I鈥檝e now read this book twice in a couple years. It鈥檚 exquisite, describing with beautiful prose some of my favourite interests: philosophical inquiry and the fantastic physics of our world. Rovelli isn鈥檛 trying to unite beauty and science because they have never been separate; the natural world and our attempts to glean its laws are beautiful. His dynamic use of language鈥攕ometimes lean in technical writing, sometimes lush when emphasizing the revelations from scientific exploration and logical inquiry鈥攈armonizes this rare book.
Time, a precious miracle that the infinite play of combinations has unlocked for us, allowing us to exist.
*** Friends, on the first Tuesday of the month I send out a short newsletter with updates on my novel-in-progress, a glimpse of one writer's life in small-town coastal Tofino, and a link to the month's free eBooks of various authors. It鈥檚 a pleasure to stay connected to those who appreciate my work. If interested, and to receive a free collection of my short stories, please sign up here:
Rovelli 茅 fascinante, como Sagan e Hawking foram. H谩 muito tempo que n茫o me sentia t茫o curioso durante a leitura de um livro de simples divulga莽茫o cient铆fica, porque Rovelli usa linguagem e met谩foras acess铆veis e porque o assunto 茅 o Tempo, algo a que todos estamos presos, queiramos ou n茫o. Descobrir aquilo que Rovelli tem para nos contar 茅 um pouco como descobrir algo sobre n贸s mesmos, porque este livro n茫o 茅 sobre o Tempo, este livro 茅 sobre aquilo de que n贸s e o cosmos somos feitos. Rovelli perfura pela mat茅ria e tempo adentro abrindo-nos ao espanto da descoberta. Admir谩vel.