It’s Not What You Think
By Bob Gelms
I have two science books that, over the years, have become my favorites, The Elegant Universe and The Field. I have just found a third, Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Keep reading, it’s not what you think.
First of all I have to tell you that there isn’t any math in the book. There is one equation that Mr. Rovelli prints just to show you what it looks like. It’s not very famous unless you are already a physicist. In the preface he states, “These lessons were written for those who know little or nothing about modern science. Together they provide a rapid overview of the most fascinating aspects of the great revolution that has occurred in physics in the twentieth and twenty first century…”
In the spirit of Mr. Rovelli’s book, physics is the concrete explanation of the magic of the universe. It is the search for the truth about how everything in the universe operates interdependently on a grand scale (galaxies) and on the minute scale (electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, gluons, etc.) This search, at times, has been fraught with the real danger of losing your life. Galileo was almost burned at the stake, commuted to life imprisoned under house arrest, for simply saying that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Scientists in the twentieth century are a little better off.
The book is very short. If you have the print version, it’s 81 pages long, with only seven chapters called lessons. It starts at the beginning of the twentieth century with, next to Isaac Newton, the most important physicist in all of history, Albert Einstein. Einstein’s theories are simply and elegantly explained in plain non-scientific language. The culmination of his work is called A General Theory of Relativity, in addition to three or four other papers that were glossed over and initially laughed at.
Once the scientific community caught up with Einstein’s brain they were struck dumb with the beauty and simplicity of his vision for the operation of the universe. It has always struck me curious that when he won the Nobel Prize it wasn’t for relativity (E=MC2). It was for one of those glossed over papers on the nature of light. He did all of his work on relativity and the photoelectric effect in 1905, when he was 26 years old. Over the years, he became a towering giant in the history of science while remaining a gentle and kind man.
The second lesson covers the exact opposite of Einstein’s theories. Planck, Bohr, and Heisenberg all contributed in some degree to the theory of the littlest “things” in the universe, which came to be called quantum mechanics. It deals with atoms and the particles that make them up, showing how they interact with the ever-changing landscape around and in them. Then all hell broke loose.
It seems that the rules and regs that describe perfectly Einstein’s big universe of galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets do not work if you apply those rules and regs to the little world of quantum mechanics. Conversely if you take the rules and regs of the little universe of quantum mechanics and apply them to Einstein’s big universe you will find that they don’t work. WELL. Both theories contradict one another and they shouldn’t because they both work perfectly in their own space and time. The big prize in physics these days is to find the link between the two because it is inherent in both theories that there be something that draws them together. Einstein called it the unified field theory and he tried to find it his whole life. He failed.
Lessons One, Two and Seven are the far and away the most interesting and most important in the book. The other essays cover more popular topics like time, black holes, probability, particles, and a lesson called Grains of Space which is a brief explanation of a theory founded by Mr. Rovell, himself a theoretical physicist. In it, he attempts, I think, to reconcile the big with the small worlds of physics. It is called loop quantum gravity and it’s where general relativity meets quantum mechanics.
In many ways the most interesting of all the essays is the last one. It’s simply called Ourselves. This is where Mr. Rovelli attempts to equate us, homo sapiens, to the interworking of the universe. We are all made of stardust put together using the immutable laws of nature. Our bodies conform to how the atoms we are made of obey quantum mechanics and the way in which we pass through time and space. It is utterly fascinating. I had an “oh wow” moment.
I’d like to close with Mr. Rovelli’s words. “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.”
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Nice light reading until Chapter 7
This is a lovely little book with a half dozen very readable chapters on physics, which is the study of how material reality is constructed. That seventh chapter is full of mush about reality, which you may value, but it isn't physics. Sig. Rovelli seems to accept only one reality - material reality. This puts him at odds with The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose. That book is a big fat thing available for about the same price as Rovelli's, To an American Mathematical Society review, "For anybody who wants to learn up-to-date physics at a level between standard popularization and graduate text, The Road to Reality is the only book in town." Review is at[...]Penrose proposes interlinked realities of math, mind and matter at the beginning of his book, and revisits the proposition at the end. The Platonic reality of mathematics, a portion of which underlies all of physics, isn't generally accepted. Mind as distinguished from brain is also anathema. It's as much easier to accept Rovelli's views in that last chapter as it is to read his book, but it's a problem chapter which I think is too 19th century and for that reason wrong. Reality is an impossibility shrieking for an explanation - Penrose accepts the burden, Rovelli does not.
Top reviews from other countries
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DiegoReviewed in Mexico on September 21, 2021
Buen libro de Física para gente que desconoce Física
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- Sitanshu RajReviewed in India on August 17, 2020
A perfect companion for a couple hours indulgence into the tale of Universe
This book is a good reminder of Hawking's classic. Man's highest thought is not reserved for the few, that is what all good expression aims at. There is great simplicity with which modern physics is explained here. The scope of the text is phenomenal. Lessons start with the very basic, and with a gentle quickness, take the reader to the very advanced. Remarkably, no chapter extends beyond a few pages. The whole book is a short scientific saga of eighty pages! "Around the Universe in Eighty Pages" could have another viable title for the book.A perfect companion for a couple hours indulgence into the tale of UniverseSitanshu Raj
Reviewed in India on August 17, 2020
I have a perception that physics is a way of thinking. The thought that deciphers the mysteries of a black hole is no different than the one that is at play in the day to day relationships. This unity often is clouded due to the precise terminology used by physicists. Tensors and integrals are not always the best way to express universal ideas. And herein comes the importance of Rovelli's books. He bypasses the scientific symbology and represents contemporary physics in a manner that even a fifth-grader can digest. It will be a great success if phrases like space-curvature, standard-model or quantum-gravity become comprehensible to most of us.
The design of the book gets full marks. Penguin books have done an outstanding job in the overall presentation of the book. As I already mentioned, it is a short book of 80 pages, and that makes it a perfect companion for a couple hours indulgence into the tale of Universe.
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