Carlo Rovelli

A delightful intellectual feast from the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time One of the world's most prominent physicists and fearless free spirit, Carlo Rovelli is also a masterful storyteller. His bestselling books have introduced millions of readers to the wonders of modern physics and his singular perspective on the cosmos. This new collection of essays reveals a curious intellect always on the move. Rovelli invites us on an accessible and enlightening voyage through science, literature, philosophy and politics. Written with his usual clarity and wit, this journey ranges widely across time and space: from Newton's alchemy to Einstein's mistakes, from Nabokov's epidopterology to Dante's cosmology, from mind-altering psychedelic substances to the meaning of atheism, from the future of physics to the power of uncertainty. Charming, pithy and elegant, this book is the perfect gateway to the universe of one of the most influential minds of our age.

And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy, and the World

There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness

Laura Mei

It is not true, as today we love to repeat, that different cultural worlds are mutually impermeable and untranslatable. The opposite is true: the borders between theories, disciplines, eras, cultures, peoples and individuals are remarkably porous, and our knowledge is fed by exchanges across this highly permeable spectrum. Our knowledge is the result of a continuous development of this dense web of exchanges. What interests us most is precisely this exchange: to compare, to exchange ideas, to learn to build from difference. To mix, not to keep things separate.

bella <3

there’s a lot more here than the capacity to notice details with obsessive attention. there is also, not least, the capacity to see beauty. 

even when our attention alights on somethings momentarily and then slides away. on the wings of a butterfly. or the sound—Lo-lee-ta—of an unforgettable name. 

thanks to his book, this species of little creatures living on a marginal planet, of a peripheral star, in one of the billions of galaxies in the cosmos, realizes for the first time, with utter astonishment, that they are not the center of the universe. 

history has so many streams that lead nowhere. 

will we be able to find someone capable today of singing, with as much lucidity, about the complexity and mystery, as well as the strange comprehensibility and profound beauty of nature, as revealed by the lights of science?

who knows how many more complex forms are out there, partly similar to and partly different from ourselves, in the immense celestial expanses? perhaps there is even one that swims in our seas. and the disturbing encounter that my friend had with the big, frightened eyes of the small octopus was nothing but the spark of an encounter between different kinds… of consciousness. 

Alfieri’s Lucretius is a kind of romantic titan, motivated by heroic rebellion, on behalf of man and against the foolishness of religion and the illusions of love, who wants to offer to himself and to the rest of us a path to knowledge and serenity—but whose project collapses because nature for him is not so much a caring mother as a wicked stepmother, and because the passions of the heart are much stronger than serenity of thought. 

Rovelli's way of seeing the world is quite beautiful. He manages to see the beauty in the world in so many ways. 

BC Hark

There’s a lot more here than the capacity to notice details with obsessive attention. There is also, not least, the capacity to see beauty. Even when our attention alights on something momentarily and then slides away. On the wings of a butterfly. Or the sound—Lo-lee-ta—of an unforgettable name. 

The greatness of literature lies in its capacity to communicate the experiences and feelings of human beings in all their variety, affording us glimpses of the boundless vastness of humanity. Literature has told us about war, adventure, love, the monotony of everyday life, political intrigues, the life of different social classes, murderers, banal individuals, artists, ecstasy, the mysterious allure of the world. 

I love that Rovelli is not afraid to like poetry, philosophy, literature, people, and is comfortable with humanity and science. 

Poetry and science are both manifestations of the spirit that creates new ways of thinking the world, in order to understand it better. Great science and great poetry are both visionary, and sometimes may arrive at the same insights. The culture of today that keeps science and poetry so far apart is essentially foolish, to my way of thinking, because it makes us less able to see the complexity and the beauty of the world as revealed by both. 

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