Carlo Rovelli Has Once Again Taken Me Along For The Ride

White Holes - Carlo Rovelli (2023)

I have admired so many great thinkers, imagining how it must have been for contemporary readers of Goethe, Homer, Nietzsche, etc.  To share in the intimate thoughts of those at the cutting edge of abstract human exploration (Literature, Philosophy, Science, Arts) as they themselves first share them with the world at large seems to me one of the rarest glories that life may afford for a layperson such as myself, in love with science and human exploration.  Reading the work of Carlo Rovelli I find myself exactly where I imagined decades ago, with open ears and mind, receiving original ideas from someone on the leading edge of abstract thought, ideas which will alter everything moving forward.  I feel so fortunate.

(I must mention here that Mr. Rovelli is Italian, and writes in his native language.  I feel a great debt owed to the translator of this book, Simon Carnell.  He managed to convey both the facts and the subtle meanings in a wonderful way.)

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist, and one of the most original thinkers.  He is gifted not only with the ability to grasp and calculate abstract mathematics and physical theory, but he writes like a poet, explaining the science with the same fervor with which he explains his personal mode of work.  He not only loves ideas, and exploring them as far as possible, but he loves the process by which he develops his ideas.  The joy he finds in work that, to many, may seem like mathematical drudgeries and theoretical mazes, is readily apparent.  I felt his joy and wonderment as his conclusions led to new questions, and eventually to the idea that a black hole does not "die" but is instead, reborn as a "white" hole.  

Thirty years ago, black holes were barely an accepted theoretical idea.  Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them catalogued in visible space, with nearly every galaxy containing a massive black hole at its center.  Physicists sought to understand the "life cycle" of a black hole, much like they studied the life cycle of stars.  Many assumed that a black hole was a permanent null void in space, while others, such as Stephen Hawking, surmised that through natural quantum effects, the black holes would slowly "evaporate" away.  Evidence of these processes has been found.   These became the consensus on black holes.

Mr. Rovelli's genius lies not only in the real of physical science, but in the much-admired (by me) and often lacking skill that is pure abstract thought.  It is in abstract thought that the human mind achieves greatness.  This place is where intuition, knowledge, and the magic of consciousness combine to create the truly new ideas.  From the first human to note that fire made the clay underneath hard and sturdy, thereby intuiting that shaping the clay while wet and then placing it in the fire she could create a vessel or bowl, to Albert Einstein discovering the relativity of time while pondering the way train stations miles apart managed to keep track of departures and arrivals, this mind abstraction has shaped all of humanity.  It is in this realm that Carlo Rovelli realized a black hole does not need to evaporate or die, since quantum effects prevented the actual formation of a singularity, always assumed to reside inside all black holes.  Instead, Rovelli grasped that the gravity pit would bounce back, in a sense, and that the black hole would become a "white hole," an object that spews matter and energy out of itself into the universe at large, without ever becoming a singularity.  This is a BIG idea, and the hard part was yet to come.

Many non-scientists assume that the job of physicist is to come up with ideas.  That is only the very start of the process.  The work comes in using rigorous mathematics to test the ideas over and over again, looking for any and all possibility of error, assumption, and misunderstanding.  One must also look into any previous work that may have analyzed the same phenomenon.  It can take a lifetime to properly verify that a physical theory stands up.  It is now 2024 and we still run experiments testing the theories Einstein crafted one hundred years ago.  THEY HOLD UP! My favorite sections of this book are when Rovelli describes the joy he feels when the mathematics consistently work in his idea's favor.  What the Universe does not allow will not happen. The joy of discovery is a pure one, and rarely described so beautifully.

I am fortunate to find myself here, with Carlo Rovelli, at the start of his journey.  I expect he will explore white holes and every new possibility they may bring.  I will be right there with him, receiving periodic updates hopefully, as he continues his foray into the unknown, leading the charge for the rest of us.  I highly recommend this book.

Lawrence M. Krauss Shares How Far We Have Come, and How Much Further We Have To Go

 

The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos – Lawrence M. Krauss (2023)

 

            If I could define myself with just one word, it would be “reader.”  Everything in my life either stems from, or draws from, the many books I have read in my 49+ years on this planet Earth.  My biggest heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Anton Wilson, Richard P. Feynman, etc., came into my life through the written page.  When I began RXTT’s Book Journey almost ten years ago, I dreamed of the possibility that book publishers and authors would appreciate my reviews and want to share their soon-to-be-released work with me.  Dreams do come true.

            The latest advance copy received by the RXTT household is physicist Lawrence M. Krauss’ forthcoming book, The Known Unknowns. (That is the UK title.  The book will be titled The Edge of Knowledge in the USA, probably because Donald Rumsfeld’s use of the phrase “known unknowns” became such a joke in ignorant America.)  After requesting it from Mr. Krauss himself, he contacted his publisher on my behalf and I was sent the book.  MIND BLOWN.

            The reason I read is to enlighten myself, both with new ideas and new information, for I am a curious mind.  Sometimes, the most useful and valuable books are not the ones with the most data, but instead the books with the best questions.  One such book, among many faves, is Richard Feynman’s The Character of Physical Law, a book full of ideas and questions which, it turns out, was also a guiding light for Lawrence M. Krauss.  Feynman’s spirit, willing to share ideas in a thoughtful manner, directly engaged with the toughest questions, and able to explain the most obtuse scientific thought in a manner where a layperson can grasp the fundamentals, is alive and well in Mr. Krauss.  We are all very fortunate.

            Krauss divides this book into five chapters, each one concerning itself with a specific topic where science has shed some light, but where there are still far more questions than answers.  Time, Space, Matter, Life, and Consciousness are the guideposts for Lawrence M. Krauss to not only sum up our current knowledge, but to also point out the vast gaps.  Our collective ignorance is the greatest impetus towards science, scientific discovery, and new knowledge.  The very worst of humanity arises when humans feel absolute certainty, whether political, religious, or social.  Not knowing is the greatest gift to an inquisitive mind.

            My biggest surprise as I devoured this book was its readability.  There are many amazing minds in the world of science, and physics specifically, but very few have the ability to provide us their thoughts and knowledge in such a fun and engrossing manner.  Some books, even great ones, can be a chore to read.  Lawrence M. Krauss has succeeded in creating a book that will enlighten young and old alike, while also opening up their minds to the myriad possibilities yet available for exploration and research.  This may be this book’s most valuable contribution, sparking the mind of some young students out there, and starting their paths toward new discoveries, new fields of research, and, hopefully, new questions.  Questions are truly important.  Anyone claiming to have all the answers is trying to rip you off, and should be treated accordingly.

            Each chapter begins with questions.  For example, the chapter titled Matter starts with these:

What is the World Made of?

How Many Forces are there? 

Is Anything Fundamental?

Is Quantum Mechanics True? 

Will Physics Have an End?

Will Matter End?

Krauss perfectly encapsulates our current state of knowledge in each chapter, sharing it with the reader through the specific details of past scientific achievement.  He then explores how we came to find that knowledge, use it, and seek to understand the underlying principles involved.  One of the best attributes of scientists is their humility in the face of new data.  It allows for self-correction, which is why the scientific method has been such a valuable tool for humanity.  Krauss details the baby steps taken in our human search for knowledge, steps often met with wildly erroneous interpretations, each of them critical points in our collective knowledge.

            Krauss brings his physics knowledge to bear on what is the most complex and mysterious part of our everyday world, the quantum realm.  He guides the reader through the many different steps us humans required to comprehend that the sub-atomic world even existed, and details plainly why it remains such a difficult science to explain.  Everything in our modern world is touched by subatomic processes, from the manufacture of medicine, to the Global Positioning Satellite System, to the various smart phones and gadgets we all take for granted.  None would work without our collective understanding of the processes involved in the quantum realm.  The irony remains that, even as we use quantum science to create new wonders, we still do not fully grasp exactly what processes allow for these modern marvels to function.  We are much like the ancient humans who used fire to bake clay, cook food, warm their home, and provide light, but had no clue as to what caused the fire to exist in the first place.  We now know that free oxygen atoms in our atmosphere combine with the carbon in wood, and that this reaction creates new compounds (Carbon dioxide, water vapor) and energy (light, heat).  It seems common sense to us now, but to a human living 500 years ago this would be utter nonsense.  They “knew” that fire was but one of the four basic constituents of everything that exists, along with Water, Earth, and Air.  For centuries, this basic explanation served its purpose, but it did not actually provide verifiable, repeatable truth.  Only the scientific method does that.

            I hope that this book receives a very wide readership, for it is as equally valuable to a young scientist as it is to a layperson interested in big ideas.  Our world bounces back and forth from close-minded totalitarian fundamentalism to wide-open progressive ideals.  It is very easy for a society to lose ground, to lose hard-earned knowledge and wisdom, because someone, or something, claims to know all the answers.  Beware of anyone telling you to stop asking questions.  RUN AWAY from anyone telling there are no new answers out there and we already know all we need to know.  They are Liars and con-artists and only seek to control you so they can line their pockets.  Find those among us who are kind, who seek new answers and new questions, who understand that, for all we know as humans, our knowledge is dwarfed by the vast amounts we do not know.  Lawrence M. Krauss has crafted an amazing book, one that not only tells us what we know and how, but informs us of what we have yet to find out.  I highly recommend it.

(This book will be published in the UK and the USA in early May, 2023)

Italo Calvino Uses Words to Help Us Travel Through Deep Time

 

Cosmicomics – Italo Calvino (1965)

 

            I have read so many science fiction books and stories.  Many of their authors use specific scientific data or details to build stories around.  A few actually try to create stories that help the reader understand the scientific concepts discussed in the works.  Even fewer of those manage to create gripping, inventive stories.  Italo Calvino managed all of this and more.  What an amazing collection of short stories!

            I have been fortunate to discover many classic authors as part of my reading on this Book Journey.  From OG sci-fi writer Henry Kuttner, to modern author Cory Doctorow, I treasure finding their work and feeding my brain with their stories.  The one book I have read which most closely resembles Cosmicomics, however, is Clifton Fadiman’s Fantasia Mathematica, a collection of short stories from the 1950’s dealing with purely mathematical subjects.

            Italo Calvino takes the same approach with cosmology, specifically an exploration of the basic concepts used to describe the development of our Universe, from the Big Bang to the farthest reaches of deep time. His main narrator, inscrutably named Qfwfq, regales the reader with stories of his past, describing in beautiful allusions and metaphors, what the universe was like in the very first instances of existence.  In one story, he describes how the Moon used to be so close to the Earth that at certain points in the year, people would climb long ladders to reach the Moon, and harvest essential nutrition from it.  This is based on the knowledge that our Moon, Luna, is slowly moving away from the Earth.  In a million years, the Moon will be far smaller in our sky, and will not completely cover the Sun during eclipses.  In the far past, the Moon was much, much bigger than the Sun in our sky.

            In another great story, Italo’s narrator describes what it was like for him to exist as a creature who once lived in water, but is now on land, and all the accompanying weirdness!  One tale describes what the inner thoughts of fundamental particles must be like, while another shares the story of three entities forever falling through space and time.  Each tale is self-contained, but the whole collection truly helps expand the mind.  I found much wisdom in these stories.  The ancient poets created stories such as these to use as learning tools, handing them down orally to the next generation.  Mr. Calvino wanted to do the same with the often-misunderstood knowledge of Deep Time brought forth by Relativity and 20^th century cosmology.

            Ancient scribes did likewise. These old stories were often misinterpreted or misunderstood by people of later generations.  Instead of seeking intellectual and informational wisdom in them, people started to see them as “divine” messages, or as dogmatic truth.  The very same thing could happen to Italo Calvino’s stories, should someone read them in two or three centuries, well after the average human forgets or is no longer taught basic scientific truths.  We seem to be headed in that direction now, sadly, and this blog, RXTT’s Book Journey, is my small attempt to forestall the stupidization of humanity.

            I must commend a Mr. William Weaver, who translated these stories into English around 1968.  The world owes so much to good translators.  It is almost as important a job as actually writing the books themselves!  Translation is how we can share ideas across cultures, continents, and centuries.

            I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in science fiction, mind expansion, originality, and creativity in storytelling.  It feels like something of a miracle that stories like this are available for us to read.  We are very fortunate indeed!

(This book can be downloaded and read here: https://www.are.na/block/11318370 )

Hans Reichenbach Uses Math to Show Us the Direction of Time

The Direction of Time – Hans Reichenbach (1956)

            In the late part of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th century, many philosophers saw their world crumble when their old, long-held assumptions about reality crashed down around them, due mainly to the various advancements that occurred in physics during that time.  Einstein’s relativistic theories regarding the large-scale composition of our Universe, and quantum mechanics’ probabilistic theories regarding the small-scale composition of the fundamental particles creating our existence did not allow for the old stand-bys of philosophy.  A Priori ideas were discarded.  Previously believed truths about our reality that were simply accepted as fact because Plato said so were understood to be false.  The understanding that any philosophical theory needed to support and not contradict the verifiable, empirical facts of the world of science was required.  In this tumult, philosophers such as Bertrand Russell sough to unify the empirical results of science with the aims of philosophy, helping create what is now called “scientific philosophy.”

           Hans Reichenbach was at the forefront of this movement.  He understood early on that the world as described by the then-current physics was not one that could be easily codified into philosophical terms and concepts.  A new philosophy was needed, and Reichenbach sought to provide that for the world.  One of his final attempts at this unification came in the form of this book, The Direction of Time, which explores how science and philosophy merge to describe the way that humans experience what we call time.

            Time is a concept that many misunderstand.  People assume that time is a purely linear function, equally applicable to the entire universe as it is to an individual, while others believe that time is relativistic, that each person experiences a different flow of time from anyone else.  Reichenbach begins his discussion of time by exploring what time means and what it has meant to philosophers of the past.  He explains the basic mathematics that show how our Universe is in a constant state of becoming from the past to the present, and how these mathematics show that time is irreversible, even though our minds can imagine such time reversals.  In our reality, time moves forward in all respects, with the future defined as that which has yet to occur but is influenced by the past and present, while the past is defined as occurrences which cannot be changed once they happen, but which will influence future events indefinitely.

            In order to explain his reasoning, Reichenbach goes into levels of math that are frankly beyond my cognition.  I have to admit that I never got past Algebra II, or Pre-Calculus in school.  As a Fine Arts student I satisfied my math requirements with Logic classes.  Thankfully, those same Logic classes help me keep Reichenbach’s thought processes in clear focus, even though his mathematical specificity leaves me in the dust.  I wish I had more ability to process Logarithms!  The beauty of knowing mathematics, even on a level such as myself, is that, while I may not understand the full import of a formula, I can follow the thought processes as one formula is permutated into another, or as it is simplified by the author.  This does help a lot in understanding this book.

            Reichenbach seems to come to the conclusion that time and the measurement of time are probabilistic processes, which require the understanding of thermodynamics, entropy, and macrostatistics as they relate to microstatistics.  Probability is a lot different in the macro world of our Universe than it is in the micro world of our subatomic particles.  Yet, they both point to an inexorable direction of time.  They both show, mathematically, that time is a process that moves in only one direction.  This is far more important and valid that the old Greek assumptions that everyone took for granted as gospel truth.  While I wish I had more of a grasp on high end mathematics, I am very glad I forged on and finished this book.  I hope to return to it one day in the future once I have increased my math skills.  It is amazing to see the basis for our current scientific philosophers.


(This book can be purchased here: Dover Books )

J.B.S. Haldane had ideas as to what the Future would hold.

Daedalus: or, Science & The Future – J.B.S. Haldane (1924)

This is yet another great recommendation by the one and only Rudy Rucker.  Whereas my previous review was of a large compendium of philosophy relating to the topic of panpsychism, this is a short and tight book, complied from the speech given by noted English scientist J.B.S. Haldane to an audience at Cambridge University.

The year was 1924, the Great War was over, and scientists had been grappling with new advanced discoveries in physics, biology, and medicine.  Mr. Haldane used his platform at this Cambridge meeting of scientists to deliver a predictive talk.  In the course of this short book, Haldane discusses so many possible outcomes for the study of science.  A few were bound to be wrong.  Just as many of them were correct.  He was the first man to utilize the prediction that England’s coal and petrol reserves would not last  beyond a few hundred years, and provide alternative methods by which energy could be harnessed, and the soot and smoke of coal and petrol fires be banished forever.  His idea was that in the future, England would be dotted with giant metal wind turbines, which would rotate, create electricity, and then be stored to be used in breaking the atomic bonds of water, creating vast amounts of oxygen and hydrogen.  Hydrogen is the most efficient energy storage material there is.  Petroleum, gas, and even nuclear fuel, are not as efficient in creating heat and energy.  J.B.S. Haldane would have been excited to drive through the deserts of west Texas, seeing the thousands of non-polluting wind turbines creating electricity through renewable resources.

He discusses the vast difference in life expectancy that the medicine at his time had achieved.  Just a hundred years before his birth, a man was lucky to live to age 40.  He stated how this life expectancy shaped so much of the world in England.  A man, upon his death, would pass on his lands to his eldest son.  When a man lives to 40 or so, his oldest son will be around 20, and will have no experience of anything other than running the family estate/business/farm.  However, when life expectancy increased, men lived to 80 years old, dying and leaving their estates to men who were in their 60’s, had fully developed personal lives and families, and would likely not know anything about how to run the family enterprise, having had to make a living outside of it for 30-40 years.  These seemingly small things, such as vaccination, pasteurization, and hygiene, have massive effects on the world we live in.

J.B.S. Haldane continues on to describe possible future outcomes based on the expected progress of scientific achievement.  He discusses so many things, in such a short amount of text, that it is truly an amazing speech.  It should have blown away anyone who heard it at Cambridge back in 1924.  He even describes his use of Daedalus as his theme, for he saw Daedalus as the first truly modern human in myth, unconcerned with the will of gods, or the whims of fate, but instead using his mind and reason to make sense of the world around him and to control it.  Too often, his story is told solely based on the myth of his son Icarus flying too close to the Sun, and plummeting to his death as a result.  However, Daedalus was an engineer, an architect, a biologist, a surgeon, and so much more.  It is a cool reminder that myths are valuable because of the richness of meaning found within, and not just solely for moral lessons.  This would be a cool book for young researchers and scientists to read.  I think it would help focus their goals to the betterment of humanity.  It would also help them understand that, while we stand on the shoulders of giants, we ourselves are the giants that the next generations will be standing upon.

(This speech can be read in full here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/haldane/works/1920s/daedalus.htm )

Freeman Dyson describes his life and science, and his hope for humanity.

Disturbing the Universe – Freeman Dyson (1979)

            While exploring the bibliography section of some of the science books I have read recently, I came across a mention of this book, by noted theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, and thank goodness the amazing M.D. Anderson Library had a copy for me to check out.  I had previously read that Mr. Dyson wrote some very interesting books which did not stick strictly to equations and mathematical rigor, but instead explored the Universe through Mr. Dyson’s inquisitive mind.  These types of books provide a great insight into the minds that have shaped our modern scientific world.

            The preface to this book details the circumstances leading up to its writing.  The Arthur P. Sloan Foundation started a book series.  They requested eminent people, people who were the leaders in their respective fields, to write something for publication.  It could be a small tome on pure mathematics, or a detailed history of a great scientist’s life, or, as in the case with Freeman Dyson, an exploration of his own life in the sciences, mixed in with the wisdom and gathered insights that he developed through his life.  Because of this, the title of the book,  Disturbing the Universe, is very apt.  The story contained within is of Freeman Dyson and the many times in his life where a chance encounter, a choice made, or an accidental experience, have led to a shake-up, a disturbance, in the way he saw and understood the Universe at large. 

            I love how this book begins.  It pays homage to the written word and the human imagination as being the grounds upon which greatness is dreamed of.  Mr. Dyson begins by detailing a children’s science fiction story that really stuck with him from his childhood, The Magic City by Edith Nesbitt.  This story detailed an alternate world, and Dyson mentions one rule that the story’s citizenry needed to heed.  In this world, you are free to choose to use any type of technology available, but, once chosen, the individual would have to use that technology, and ONLY that technology, for the rest of their lives.  For example, should a person choose to use roller skates as a means of transportation, that person, once they chose, would be denied the use of any other transporting technology.  This idea became a metaphor for Freeman Dyson.  He came to understand that any technology that is created by humans has the power to alter anything and everything that comes after its creation.  The scary part is that, as Freeman Dyson explains, 99% of all new technology stays purely as a clever toy for the powerful and rich few.  Only around 1% of all created technology finds a wide use and spreads throughout the human world.  The problem lies in that there is no way to predict what tech will catch on, and what the moral and philosophical implications and repercussions will be.  Once the printing press was invented, there was no shortage of people who sought to destroy or abandon this technology because of the fear that printing presses would allow for the dissemination of ideas and knowledge contrary to what the powers-that-be wish the masses to read or know about.  Freeman Dyson understood that this same problem applies to even seemingly innocuous technology, such as household goods, and not just to new weapons or giant machines.

            Mr. Dyson goes on to discuss his education and development into one of the premier mathematical and theoretical minds of the 20^th century.  He details his involvement in the British Air Force during WWII, and how the omnipresent bureaucracy showed him the blind stupidity of man, the illogic of “leadership”, and the brutality of those that send our youngest to die in war.  He saw the stupidity of the Air Force equating mission successes with number of sorties flown, or number of planes involved, and not with whether the target was actually hit, whether the crews came back alive, or whether their methods were pure suicide for these air crews.  The crews were never told the amount of planes and airmen that came back or that died or that were lost.  They were fed lie after lie after lie to keep them motivated to enter unsafe flying targets and get blown the F up over some unseen and unimportant target.  This shaped him very much.  He stated that when he moved to the USA, it was not until the Vietnam war that the people of the USA lost their innocent and naïve belief in the inherent goodness of their leaders.  The British and most of Europe had lost this during the interminable First World War.

            One of my favorite passages deals with Freeman Dyson’s relationship with my idol, Richard P. Feynman.  The two worked together while at Cornell University, and shared a road-trip across the USA.  His descriptions of Feynman and their relationship are so cool.  Freeman Dyson was lucky to work with the greatest minds around, from Feynman to Hans Bethe, to Robert Oppenheimer.  He is very honest in his portrayals of these peers of his.  It is always reassuring to me to hear of how deeply scientists can disagree over issues and still maintain a collegial working relationship and even be very close friends.  More people could learn from such things.

            Much of the latter half of this book deals with the various political and social engagements that Freeman Dyson took up after his main work was complete.  He is candid about his failures and humble about his achievements.  The last chapters deal with Mr. Dyson’s vision for the future of humanity, of life itself, and make for very moving reading.  I wish his vision of our future indeed comes to pass, allowing humans to differentiate themselves by exploring our solar system, creating colonies, and spreading Life through the cosmos.  Dyson has done the math and he feels, much like I do, that, while Life existing on Earth seems to point to the ability of Life to be anywhere in our Galaxy and Universe, the truth may very well be that the myriad conditions needed, not only for cellular Life to develop, but for the planet to be stable enough for Billions of years to allow for the creation of “Intelligent” Life, are only found here on our Planet Earth, out of all the possible worlds of our Multi-verse.  If there are a quadrillion planets in our Universe, and the odds against Life arising are 1 in a quadrillion, then we are indeed alone.  If the odds turn out to be 1 in a septillion or bigger, then the very existence of Life on Earth can be seen as the ultimate miracle and all of our humanity as a blip in the vast expanse of space-time.  I too think we humans have a mandate to spread Life, in all forms, throughout the Galaxy and then the Universe.  I hope Freeman Dyson’s vision comes to pass.  I will definitely be on the lookout for more books by Mr. Freeman Dyson.

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

Quantum Gravity, and the history of human exploration into the nature of our Universe

Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey Into Quantum Gravity – Carlo Rovelli (2014)

            Around a year ago I read and reviewed another book by the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli.  (Click Here for that Review) That book was a detailed history of the man known as Anaximander, of whom I wrote that he is “the earliest human that we have record of who helped create the logical and rational framework that set the stage for the scientific revolution all humans have experienced over the past 250 years.”  At the time I bemoaned my inability to read his then-current book Reality is Not What It Seems.  Thank goodness for the good folks at the M.D. Anderson Library of the University of Houston.  They acquired the English translation and this is what I managed to stumble across during my browsing.

            Where to start?  This book is an attempt by Mr. Rovelli to discuss the history of our collective efforts to understand what constitutes the fabric of Reality, the elementary nature of our selves and everything that exists.  Beginning with Anaximander, Plato, and Aristotle, Mr. Rovelli describes how each of these ancient geniuses grappled with the substance of reality, and with the ability and limits of the human to comprehend this reality.  He details the amazing and near-miraculous insights from these men that propelled our entire world forward in the quest to understand. Leuccipus and Democritus formed the basis of “atomist” theory, purely through rigorous analytical thought, understanding that all matter is composed of small indivisible parts. Democritus alone was such an amazing thinker.  It is a shame most of his massive output has been lost to history.

            After the initial period of discovery, once monotheistic religions took over the human landscape, progress was effectively halted, and the knowledge of our forefathers was lost in the Western World.  Scientific fact was replaced by dogma and blind faith in the make-believe magic stories of priests and the governments which aligned themselves with religions.  It was after nearly a thousand years of barbaric ignorance that travelers and scholars visited India and brought back the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, knowledge which was critical to creating the modern world we all share.  From this influx of ancient wisdom and science, someone like Isaac Newton was able to understand and explain what he saw as the structure of the Universe.  Newton saw a fiercely deterministic static Universe.  His laws of motion and his invention of the Calculus allowed humans to plot star and planet trajectories centuries in advance, and his mathematics and science helped the Western world shake free of its religion-induced intellectual coma.

            The world as Newton saw it was un-changing, and infinite.  Scientists continued to study the Universe, finding and creating new tools with which to explore.  In the early 1900’s, Albert Einstein proceeded to shake the world to its core, much like Newton had done before.  Einstein understood that there is no static Universe and that everything is constantly in motion relative to everything else.  He was the first human to grasp that time is not a specific thing, existing separate from the Universe.  He saw that we live in an ever-expanding Present.  Einstein also saw that the world is not what Newton stated.  There is no matter and energy floating in empty space.  There is just matter and energy existing in space-time and gravity is merely the deformation of this space-time by massive objects.  All of these things have been verified countless times.

            What Einstein did for the world at large, quantum mechanics did for the world of the very small.  It is an extremely successful theory and its predictions have been validated countless times as well.  Quantum Mechanics shows us that the world is made up of quantum objects, which have probabilistic traits.  One cannot know everything about a proton, unlike in Newton’s time, when it was assumed that this was possible.  This indeterminacy has been proven to exist throughout the Universe at all quantum levels.

            All of this leads into the discussion of Quantum Gravity.  Einstein’s Relativity and quantum Mechanics work together in most ways, but in special cases, such as black holes, or singularities, both theories fall apart.  Gravity can only be calculated in the macro sense, and quantum effects never give definite answers.  To combine these two theories is the current goal of theoretical physicists around the world.  Some have been working on String Theory, which predicts the existence of super-symmetric particles.  These particles have not been seen in experiments at particle colliders.  This lends more weight to Rovelli’s field, which is studying Loop Quantum Gravity, which seeks to study the constituents of gravity, or the quanta of gravity. 

            Light acts as a wave and a particle.  The quanta of light is the Photon.  Gravity seems to act as both a wave and a particle, gravitational waves having been detected as recently as 2016.  Loop Quantum Gravity postulates that the smallest quanta of gravity are actually small closed “loops” as opposed to points.  He goes into a great explanation of his research and of the ways that scientists have arrived at this idea, one which seems to be more promising that String Theory. What a great book.  The Bibliography at the back will keep me happy for a while too.  I wish I could better describe how much is contained within this awesome book,  but you will have to read it for yourself.

(This book is available for purchase here: REALITY IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS )