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Seven Brief Lessons on PhysicsThe mystery and beauty of the world and our place in it
Published 3/10/2024
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Carlo Rovelli writes in extremely elegant, ornamental, and polished prose. An Italian theoretical physicist who specializes in loop quantum gravity theory (an attempt to merge quantum mechanics with general relativity), he has written a series of what he calls “lessons,” (originally articles in an Italian newspaper, now somewhat expanded as book chapters), to explain modern physics to the general reader: elementary particles, gravity, black holes, probability, and so on. The book, a bestseller in Italy, translated into English by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre, is a delight.


It’s the work of a lifetime, of a distinguished academic career, distilled into fewer than 100 pages. It’s clear, it’s concise, and it’s utterly lovely. Rovelli compares Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity to Shakespeare’s King Lear, Mozart’s Requiem, Homer’s Odyssey, and the Sistine Chapel. He gives us some history of the science he covers, astounds us with the brilliant simplicity of his explanations, and comforts us about our place in this baffling and beautiful universe. There are gorgeous passages throughout, but I’ll just provide you with his conclusion in the final lesson (right after he quotes from Lucretius):


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. Our knowledge of the world continues to grow.


There are frontiers where we are learning and our desire for knowledge burns. They are in the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, at the origins of the cosmos, in the nature of time, in the phenomenon of black holes, and in the workings of our own thought processes. Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking.


I would love to see some more writing by Rovelli. I hope very much that this is a brief taste of more detailed, denser work to come, for those of us who love good writing and those of us who love to learn about the mystery and the beauty of the world, and our place in it.


BOOK: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics


AUTHOR: Carlo Rovelli


YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2016


IMAGE: book cover, Penguin Books


Category: Culture
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