Status
Available
Publication
Riverhead Books (2021), 256 pages
Description
"One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, Rovelli examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the 21-year-old Werner Heisenberg first developed quantum theory, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious. As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercly debate the theory's meaning, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships, not substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for understanding the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness. Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better understand our place in it"--… (more)
Media reviews
In principio non c’è l’atomo ma Platone. A dirlo non è un filosofo, idealista e metafisico. Ma un fisico, anzi il fisico che avviò la rivoluzione scientifica più radicale di ogni tempo: la fisica quantistica. È Werner Heisenberg, premio Nobel per la fisica, che prima di entrare nel magico
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e scientifico mondo della fisica, confutò la teoria degli atomi del filosofo Democrito con il Timeo di Platone. E scoprì con il filosofo delle idee celesti che all’inizio non c’era l’atomo ma la simmetria, oggi diremmo la relazione, l’armonia, la corrispondenza tra tutte le cose. Poi, dopo fervidi studi e accese dispute, a 23 anni, nell’Isola sacra del Mare del Nord, Helgoland – dove per Goethe poteva essere sperimentato “lo Spirito del mondo” – quella sua intuizione originaria assunse il rigore della fisica.
Helgoland è il titolo di un testo uscito da poco (Adelphi, pp.223) del fisico Carlo Rovelli e racconta in modo avvincente la nascita e lo sviluppo della teoria dei quanti. Rovelli non è un divulgatore ma un affabulatore scientifico, di professione fisico puro, scrive best seller e traduce scoperte e trattati scientifici in miti fashion, favolosi ma rigorosi. I fisici, e gli astrofisici in particolare, sono le nuove star – e mai definizione di stelle fu più pertinente – nel firmamento del sapere. Hanno preso il posto dei teologi, dei filosofi, degli ideologi. Ma se gratti sotto la fisica riappare Platone, la filosofia, il pensiero dell’origine.
A raccontarci dell’incontro di Heisenberg con Platone non è Rovelli ma un letterato esule romeno, Vintila Horia, autore di romanzi tra cui Dio è nato in esilio, morto nel ’92. In un libro del 1971, Viaggio ai centri della Terra (ed. Mediterranee), Horia dialogò con Heisenberg. Una volta me ne parlò a cena e benché ormai anziano, si infervorava come un bambino, gli brillavano gli occhi a raccontare di Heisenberg e del suo principio d’Indeterminazione, perché vedeva le implicazioni meta-fisiche, nel pensiero, nelle visioni del mondo e nel sacro. E insieme la sconfitta del materialismo, del determinismo e delle loro derivazioni. Le prospettive che apre la fisica quantistica sono infinite, scriveva Horia sulla scia di Heisenberg. E leggendo ora il libro di Rovelli se ne ha suggestiva conferma.
Non proverò nemmeno a riassumervi il testo di Rovelli, brillante e allusivo, e se mi inoltrassi nei meandri della fisica, mi perderei sicuramente nei suoi abissi, vista l’enciclopedica ignoranza in materia. Ma proverò, assumendomi ogni colpa e sollevando l’autore, a tradurre il nocciolo di quelle osservazioni in spunti per una visione del mondo.
Dunque, qual è l’essenza, il cuore, l’effetto principale della rivoluzione quantica sulla concezione della nostra vita? Che tutto è fatto di relazioni, compreso quel che chiamiamo io, e ogni attività spirituale, culturale, politica ma anche fisica e corporale. L’io si vanifica, non è una sostanza ma un processo mentale, una rete di sinapsi, anzi “un ricamo delicato e complesso della rete di relazioni, di cui è costituita la realtà”. Al centro di tutto c’è il vuoto, come direbbero i maestri d’oriente; ma in quel vuoto fluttuano energie e corrispondenze (la simmetria platonica); gli enti non hanno una loro autonoma entità ma sono effimeri nodi di questa rete. L’interconnessione di tutte le cose, riassume Rovelli traducendo l’espressione usata per i quanti, entanglement. E qui, dopo il viaggio nelle regioni ardite e straniere della fisica, mi sono sentito nuovamente a casa. A fare la stessa scoperta, arrivando da ben altri percorsi, fu infatti un filosofo platonico del terzo secolo, a me caro. “Tutto è cospirante”, scrive Plotino nel terzo libro delle Enneadi, nell’individuo come nell’intero universo. È un pensiero magico, all’apparenza, come la famosa equazione di Paul Dirac: le cose che sono state una volta a contatto continuano a influenzarsi a distanza, anche di chilometri o anni luce, dopo che il contatto fisico è cessato. Magia delle telecomunicazioni. Prima di lui lo diceva Plotino. Per spiegarsi, Rovelli ricorre infine non alla fisica ma a La tempesta di Shakespeare e alla celebre frase di Prospero: “Siamo fatti della stessa stoffa dei sogni”. Siamo vaghi e ineffabili.
Rovelli non concede nulla alla filosofia, alla teologia, allo spirito, anche se l’ultima parola del suo scritto è Mistero, con la emme maiuscola. La stessa che chiude il primo capitolo. In principio è il Mistero, alla fine è il Mistero. Nel mezzo è la ricerca, la fisica, lo studio dei come, senza i perché. La stessa teoria dei quanti è da lui ritenuta “l’allucinazione meglio in armonia col mondo”.
Prima di Heisenberg e di Niels Bohr, c’è Einstein. Per anni, la sua teoria della relatività generale è stata collegata erroneamente al relativismo generale dell’epoca. In realtà la relatività è il contrario della variabilità, della soggettività e del soggettivismo a cui induce il relativismo: la teoria della relatività pone invece le invarianze, stabilisce rapporti tra spazio e tempo, di cui scorge la curvatura. La relatività non relativizza il tutto ma lo pone in relazione universale, lo intreccia in una rete fluida di nessi. Per Rovelli la scoperta dei quanti induce al “pensiero relazionale”. Cosa cambia per la nostra mente, per la nostra vita? Tutto, tanto, poco, niente, si potrà rispondere. Ma il cosmo si rivela consonante, simmetrico; è ordine e bellezza, direbbe Baudelaire, è magica armonia, meraviglia. Lo stupore di trovarci senza l’io dentro una favola universale chiamata realtà.
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User reviews
LibraryThing member antao
Before starting the new Rovelli I picked up Russell’s “Our Knowledge of the External World” (Lecture VIII - On the notion of cause) and it offers plenty to think about with regard to this philosophy vs. science question. If I may quote his final lines:
“The one and only condition, I believe,
In any epoch there appears a delusional belief in the convenience of the seminal 'now', arriving at the brink of knowing everything. Heidegger in his language stretching wisdom arrived at the idea of the “whys” being discoverable within measurable “hows”, only to then justify becoming a member of the Nazi party; who as we all know, set about denying quantum physics and destroying or exiling many brilliant minds capable of major contributions to humanity. In a demonstrable and empirical way it is therefore as though denial of the philosophers question precipitates the retardation of scientific enquiry. At a time when scientists can now make an increasingly compelling argument that human kind is really an elaborate biomechanical machine, there is surely a need for preservation of the possibility that some other phenomenon may account for higher human states and aspirations such as love, justice, tolerance, loyalty, self-lessness, altruism etc.
Reading this scientific biography on Heisenberg it’s got me thinking: I think there's a distinction to be made between "philosophical realism" and "realism about quantum properties" (e.g. the uncertainty principle). An interpretation is realist in the first sense if it is a description of reality as opposed to a description of our state of knowledge about reality: it's "ontological rather than merely epistemic". An interpretation is realist in the second sense if it allows to simultaneously attribute properties (values) to all the observables at the same time. Bell's theorem (modulo non-superdeterminism) says that a local theory can't be realist in this latter sense. Copenhagen, which is not realist in the second sense, may or may not be "just epistemic" depending on whether you give an epistemic or physical meaning to measurement. QBism is the quintessential purely epistemic theory. The Many Worlds interpretation is philosophically realist but not realist about quantum properties. So, where does that leave us? There's really a problem in considering the absolutness of quantum proprieties in both Copenhagen and Many World interpretations but the latter views the collapse of the wave function as an objective process happening all the time while for the Copenhagen interpretation is observer dependent. But that was always the big difference between these interpretations since they were born. And it all really started with Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac…too bad Rovelli didn’t stop there.
“The one and only condition, I believe,
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which is necessary in order to secure for philosophy in the near future an achievement surpassing all that has hitherto been accomplished by philosophers, is the creation of a school of men with scientific training and philosophical interests, unhampered by the traditions of the past, and not misled by the literary methods of those who copy the ancients in all except their merits.”In any epoch there appears a delusional belief in the convenience of the seminal 'now', arriving at the brink of knowing everything. Heidegger in his language stretching wisdom arrived at the idea of the “whys” being discoverable within measurable “hows”, only to then justify becoming a member of the Nazi party; who as we all know, set about denying quantum physics and destroying or exiling many brilliant minds capable of major contributions to humanity. In a demonstrable and empirical way it is therefore as though denial of the philosophers question precipitates the retardation of scientific enquiry. At a time when scientists can now make an increasingly compelling argument that human kind is really an elaborate biomechanical machine, there is surely a need for preservation of the possibility that some other phenomenon may account for higher human states and aspirations such as love, justice, tolerance, loyalty, self-lessness, altruism etc.
Reading this scientific biography on Heisenberg it’s got me thinking: I think there's a distinction to be made between "philosophical realism" and "realism about quantum properties" (e.g. the uncertainty principle). An interpretation is realist in the first sense if it is a description of reality as opposed to a description of our state of knowledge about reality: it's "ontological rather than merely epistemic". An interpretation is realist in the second sense if it allows to simultaneously attribute properties (values) to all the observables at the same time. Bell's theorem (modulo non-superdeterminism) says that a local theory can't be realist in this latter sense. Copenhagen, which is not realist in the second sense, may or may not be "just epistemic" depending on whether you give an epistemic or physical meaning to measurement. QBism is the quintessential purely epistemic theory. The Many Worlds interpretation is philosophically realist but not realist about quantum properties. So, where does that leave us? There's really a problem in considering the absolutness of quantum proprieties in both Copenhagen and Many World interpretations but the latter views the collapse of the wave function as an objective process happening all the time while for the Copenhagen interpretation is observer dependent. But that was always the big difference between these interpretations since they were born. And it all really started with Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac…too bad Rovelli didn’t stop there.
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LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
The first two parts of this book provide an account of the origins of quantum theory and canvas a number of interpretations of how best to make sense of the curious world that appears to arise in light of this theory. These are challenging sections to read, even though the real math is shunted off
The third part of the book then moves away from the difficult but well-trodden ground (at least for Rovelli) of quantum theory into areas less certain and less satisfactory. I appreciate that Rovelli is remarkably well-read but I worry that outside the confines of physics he does not bring an equal scrutiny to bear on statements that might superficially appear to lend tangential support to his relational account. That is unfortunate because it suggests that he doesn’t think these disciplines can sustain equal critical weight. Or is he simply having too much fun in these regions outside his safe (but mathematically rigorous) realm? In any case, I fear it leads to a much weaker book than might otherwise have been the case.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to recommend this book on the strength of those first two parts and shall continue to look forward to Rovelli’s further explications of physics.
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to endnotes. Fortunately Rovelli is never less than exceptionally clear and even though the math is certainly beyond me, the argument was comprehensible and persuasive. Ultimately Rovelli defends a relational account of quantum mechanics that sensibly avoids the kinds of hostages to metaphysical fortune that burden the other major competing accounts.The third part of the book then moves away from the difficult but well-trodden ground (at least for Rovelli) of quantum theory into areas less certain and less satisfactory. I appreciate that Rovelli is remarkably well-read but I worry that outside the confines of physics he does not bring an equal scrutiny to bear on statements that might superficially appear to lend tangential support to his relational account. That is unfortunate because it suggests that he doesn’t think these disciplines can sustain equal critical weight. Or is he simply having too much fun in these regions outside his safe (but mathematically rigorous) realm? In any case, I fear it leads to a much weaker book than might otherwise have been the case.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to recommend this book on the strength of those first two parts and shall continue to look forward to Rovelli’s further explications of physics.
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LibraryThing member fpagan
To Rovelli, the essence of quantum theory is that facts that are real relative to one object (which could be an "observer") need not be real relative to another object. He indicates how this psi-epistemic Relational Interpretation accommodates the known properties of quantum entanglement and allows
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classical-physics theories to be appropriately seen as approximations. A philosophy-oriented chapter wanders too far afield, I'd say, in sections on political philosophy and ancient Buddhist writings, but there's a "contextuality" section full of references to prominent ideas like structural realism. I did have difficulty getting much out of the chapter on mentation and consciousness. As with his earlier popularizations, the efforts of able translators from Italian (in this case Erica Segre and Simon Carnell) have allowed the great charm and clarity of much of Rovelli's writing to be enjoyed by English-speaking readers. Show Less
LibraryThing member TobinElliott
This is likely my favourite read of the month. What starts out as a bit of a history lesson on the discovery of quantum theory eventually rolls around and into a fascinating philosophical discussion on the nature of reality.
No book in the past couple of years has made me stop reading just to run
A book I'll definitely read again.
No book in the past couple of years has made me stop reading just to run
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down all the thoughts that it inspired.A book I'll definitely read again.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
The first half of this, which discusses Heisenberg's idea of using matrices to represent the "superposition" of particles in quantum physics, and his subsequent interactions with Neils Bohr, Schrodinger, and other physics heavyweights is fascinating. But about halfway through, Rovelli goes off
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track--or at least I lost my interest. The rest of the book seemed far less focused and more speculative, and not in a particularly interesting way. Although the audiobook was well read (not by the author in this case), this is material that really calls for reading, not listening. Show Less
LibraryThing member Helenliz
This really is a book of two halves for me. In the early portions he tries to described Quantum Mechanics, both its history and how it came to be. I found this intensely frustrating. As a student, I studied this and all this section did is prove to me that my brain has addled with the passing of
From here he changes tack and it becomes all rather more philosophical. It's here that I stopped feeling frustrated with the book and my shortcomings and it all became more interesting to my current self. It also became a more personal book, relating far more to his view of the world (and the references become more of him than previously, which I found a little self promoting).
I'm honestly not sure who this book is written for. As a former scientist, I was aware of most of the ideas and could follow the argument, but to someone with less of a grasp of quantum mechanics, this is likely to go above their heads. For someone who works in the field, it will be too basic. If he's writing for former students of the subject, that's not exactly a wide field. The more philosophical chapters ate probably more open, but you have to wade through the detail to get to it.
In terms of style, it's readable, but he has a penchant for ellipsis that should have been curbed.
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the years. I found this rather depressing and, potentially, rather too brief. As if you can ever explain the history of 20th century science in 50 pages. The chapters on how people interpret quantum mechanics, the many & hidden worlds concepts I did find interesting. From here he changes tack and it becomes all rather more philosophical. It's here that I stopped feeling frustrated with the book and my shortcomings and it all became more interesting to my current self. It also became a more personal book, relating far more to his view of the world (and the references become more of him than previously, which I found a little self promoting).
I'm honestly not sure who this book is written for. As a former scientist, I was aware of most of the ideas and could follow the argument, but to someone with less of a grasp of quantum mechanics, this is likely to go above their heads. For someone who works in the field, it will be too basic. If he's writing for former students of the subject, that's not exactly a wide field. The more philosophical chapters ate probably more open, but you have to wade through the detail to get to it.
In terms of style, it's readable, but he has a penchant for ellipsis that should have been curbed.
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Language
Original language
Italian