HELGOLAND: MAKING SENSE OF THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION – CARLO ROVELLI

Usually, I steer clear of the “quantum physics” stuff. There’s too much of it, it requires too much of a dumbing down/trusting the author for my tastes, it’s use to justify all sorts of strange conclusions, the list goes on. I am interested in Time, though, so I have read another one of his books. Someone gave me this one and it’s a great before-bed read. Rovelli does a good job of explaining some of the more far-out physics stuff for a very lay audience. As is necessary in such cases, there are many times in the book where he has to write something like, “and someone used insane levels of math to prove this” or, “you might think this other thing, but it’s actually impossible based on math we can’t really get into.” I have no doubt that Rovelli understands this stuff, from my outsider’s perspective, he seems legit and intelligent on these subjects but ultimately, this stuff is fiction to me. All that aside I like the ideas he’s peddling. Rovelli seeks to solve some of the weirder or spookier quantum actions and aspects by reframing the world as not a series of objects that interact sometimes but rather as interactions, the nodes of which we think of as objects. So it’s the relationships themselves that supersedes the substance. Do I fully understand why this solves the problems that Rovelli says it does? Of course not, I’m very dumb. But I do like it as an idea. He brings up Nāgārjuna as a sort of philosophical prerunner to these ideas. He spends a little too much time on his personal life, I don’t really care about what brought him to physics, nor do I really care about the likes of Bohr or Heisenberg were up to. Also, there is some Lenin shit-talking that seems to come somewhat out of nowhere. But overall, very interesting and engaging ideas being thrown out. Much to consider, as they say.