Carlo Rovelli Seven brief lessons on physics
Translated Simon Carnell and Erica Segre
Penguin 2016 £6.99 ISBN 978-0141981727 96pp
This Italian
bestseller is spreading the world as word gets round of a scientist who can put
a century’s achievement into less than 100 readable pages. I appreciated the
simple, clear text despite translation and some of his intriguing lines that
beg philosophical and theological engagement. ‘It is part of our nature to love
and to be honest. It is part of our nature to long to know more, and to
continue to learn’.
Over the
last century the frontiers of science have advanced through relativity theory’s
insight into the cosmos, quantum theory’s insight into the subatomic and the
acknowledgment that the working of our own thought processes make for a
fuzziness between observer and observed. Rovelli is excited by the way we stand
‘on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the Unknown’ and
senses breathtaking mystery and beauty.
The seven
lessons he gives are on relativity, quantum
mechanics, the architecture of the universe, elementary particles, quantum
gravity, probability and ourselves. They were initially given in an Italian
Sunday newspaper and were so well received that they were published further
afield across the world. It is a mark of great intellect to both grasp deep
truth and be able to communicate it simply and clearly, itself evidence of your
firm grasp. Here particularly is a lesson for theologians reminding of the need
to distil thinking again and again into the vernacular, as Lewis used to say.
Truth isn’t esoteric.
The wisdom
Rovelli distils seems to have been acquired indirectly, even through wasting time!
We’re told the young Albert Einstein ‘spent a year loafing aimlessly’. This is
a typical counter-cultural aspect of this fascinating and lucid treatise. I
liked the way it goes head on at the paradox of space being all curves in
relativity theory and granular in quantum mechanics. Both theories work well
independently but can’t both be right. A current scientific endeavour called
‘quantum gravity’ is an attempt at resolving this schizophrenia.
When the
universe gets compressed, according to quantum gravitational theory, there’s a
counter force so what we know as the ‘Big Bang’ might conceivably be a ‘Big
Bounce’ with our world being born from a preceding universe’s contraction with
an intermediate phase where there’s neither space nor time. This is fascinating
reading, as is the perception that the distinction between past and future is
inseparable from the inevitable flow of heat from hot to cold. ‘Time sits at
the centre of the tangle of problems raised by the intersection of gravity,
quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. A tangle of problems where we are still
in the dark’.
It’s an
achievement of the author to take unschooled readers out of the dark so far as
the main achievements of science in the last century whilst making us more
aware of current frontiers of knowledge awaiting illumination by thought and
experiment. Ongoing eagerness for discovery and honesty in facing challenges to
age old thinking aren’t just the preserve of the scientist.
Canon John Twisleton Rector of St Giles, Horsted Keynes 18th March
2016
