麻豆传媒

Carlo Rovelli, Translated by Simon Carnell

Allen Lane

As the science that describes the ingredients of our reality and how they interact, physics can make a strong claim to helping us understand our surroundings. But what about the making of meaning more broadly?

In , physicist Carlo Rovelli tackles this question to great effect. He argues that, with the advent of quantum physics, science underwent a revolution, but philosophers haven鈥檛 fully caught up. Writing with a spirit of enthusiastic defiance and ardent conviction, Rovelli aims to offer them (and us) a crash course.

He is no stranger to ranging across physics, philosophy and the history of science, and has written very popular books on quantum physics, its history and its myths, such as Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. As a physicist, he has worked on quantum gravity, or how to harmoniously combine quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein鈥檚 theory of general relativity 鈥� to date, two of the most successful branches of physics.

For Rovelli, quests for absolute truths are projections of psychological and cultural anxieties

Rovelli is also writing from the perspective of an interpretation of quantum theory he pioneered: relational quantum mechanics, the idea that objects don鈥檛 exist independently, but in relation to each other. He uses this as a starting point for a bigger discussion he developed as lectures to philosophers at Princeton University. This is why his new book is structured in a pedagogical way, helping readers follow his arguments.

From the outset, Rovelli carefully instructs readers to recognise implicit assumptions they hold about the nature of our world, ones that depend on our specific place in the universe. For example, because Earth is fairly small, we have a shared notion of time, which wouldn鈥檛 be the case if we had grown up playing phone tag with friends across the galaxy.

The same is true of how we conceptualise things like truth. 鈥淎djectives like ultimate, truly, real and objective turn out to be meaningless,鈥� he says, establishing one of the book鈥檚 themes. For Rovelli, quests for absolute truths are projections of psychological and cultural anxieties.

This dovetails nicely with relational quantum mechanics, where the key ingredients of reality aren鈥檛 objects, but relations and processes. Rovelli doesn鈥檛 worry about knowing an object for certain, so long as he can describe how it interacts with, or changes in relation to, other objects.

What could seem like empty relativism is made concrete with the help of quantum physics, and Rovelli anchors his ideas by insisting that experiences 鈥� also relational 鈥� ought to matter more than abstractions. 鈥淪cientific models are conditional statements,鈥� he says, underlining that even the best theories can change if confronted by new data.

Absolute certainty, strict causality and objectivity are all idealisations that can hold science and philosophy back when applied too strenuously, writes Rovelli. There is no space or time in his world, just quantum processes: space and time are things we can name because they eventually touch us. 鈥淭he world is therefore relative information between its different parts,鈥� he states. 鈥淭he causal orientation of the world is only statistical.鈥�

In the book鈥檚 second half, Rovelli uses ideas of information, dissipation and entropy to round out his picture of the world. Many of these ideas aren鈥檛 new. For example, the notion that much of our world is determined by existing in an entropy gradient 鈥� a state where entropy is increasing, or moving from a few tightly ordered configurations to a mess of many equally likely ones 鈥� will be familiar to followers of modern physics. But, in Rovelli鈥檚 view, philosophers haven鈥檛 taken many of these ideas seriously enough.

On the Equality of All Things is impressively broad, and Rovelli moves easily from quantum gravity and entropy to free will, consciousness, morality and how science works. Throughout, he extrapolates from ideas developed in physics. 鈥淜nowledge,鈥� he writes, 鈥渋s primarily a physical correlation鈥�, again harking back to relational quantum mechanics.

From this, it follows that all our knowledge is contextual and perfect certainty is meaningless: there is no secret foundation of reality beyond what we can access through physical processes. The world can be explained by physics, and physics offers us only relationality, perspectivism and, at times, vagueness. If this offends us, that is a function of culture, not a problem with the world, he argues.

Given my traditional physics training, I bristled at some of Rovelli鈥檚 ideas 鈥� even if they didn鈥檛 seem so troubling after a few more moments鈥� thought. This may be a testament to how willing he is to challenge the orthodoxy people like me absorbed at university. As a writer who has tried to describe the lessons that quantum physics offered my own life, I found his insistence on relationships, his allergy to absolutes and his humility about how often experience teaches us to change our scientific minds compelling.

Towards the end of the book, he writes that the world is our 鈥渂lood brother鈥�, that 鈥淲e face the world not as an 鈥業鈥� faced with a 鈥榯his鈥�, but as a 鈥榤e鈥� faced with a 鈥榶ou鈥�. We are in the world. We are here. And we are home.鈥� Seeing ourselves as abstract consciousnesses disconnected from the world and looking for truths beyond how it touches us is a fool鈥檚 errand. Here, Rovelli and I are in harmony.

Yet there are imperfections in Rovelli鈥檚 argument. In arguing against contemporary philosophers who advocate a more absolute view of the world, many of his citations point to decades-old philosophical works. Rovelli is also quick to call arguments and ideas 鈥渘onsense鈥� 鈥� which is impactful and charming in a lecture, but, page after page, can seem condescending.

And in discussing modern science, misconceptions of how it ought to work and what its goals are, I kept waiting to read about the societal forces shaping science. How such an expansive book can fail to mention political and economic forces that influence and benefit from some of the philosophical beliefs Rovelli attacks baffles me a little.

Ultimately, though, On the Equality of All Things is a worthwhile intervention in modern science and philosophy, and because Rovelli鈥檚 writing flows smoothly between difficult concepts, it is fairly accessible and rich with footnotes for all who want to know more.

Three more books on how we make meaning

Liam Graham

Liam Graham, a physicist turned economist, has produced a clear, unfussy exploration of how ideas about statistics, ensembles of objects and entropy are crucial for understanding our world.

Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson

A physicist and two philosophers decisively show how any view of science that moves away from the human relation to the world and up the 鈥渟piral of abstraction鈥� is bound to fail 鈥� or lead to harm.

Karen Barad

This is an academic book that takes some effort to parse, but also a masterclass in how the philosophy of early quantum theory can be related to ideas from critical and feminist theory.

When you make a purchase via聽the links聽on this page, we receive a commission.