"We are such stuff as our dreams are made of, and our life is rounded with a sleep"
About as much clarity and fun you can possibly have with quantum physics, a shot of the good stuff this book!
It's my first (won't be the last) from Carlo Rovelli and I was struck by the lucid storytelling combined with great science writing. He manages to synthesize disparate topics into a quite beautiful whole while explaining truly befuddling ideas and results as well as can be done.
Tangents such as the political theories of Lenin and Bogdanov? Philosophical questions on consciousness? Evolution, neuroscience, and sprinkles of autobiographical tidbits? All in just 200 pages of a quantum physics book? Absolutely.
The actual story and science of the book is well set out. The early breakthroughs, the protagonists and their historical origins, the startling effects. Then an exploration of the possible answers to the mystery, first the explanations the author does not agree with, then the relational theory he does.
The relational model is in opposition to the many words theory so we'll explained in David Detuch's work. From memory, Detuch seems far more set in stone with his beliefs while my lay mind was easily swayed as well as intrigued here.
It is posited that anything is real only in relation to something else at that moment, otherwise we are not able to talk about it. Nothing can exist outside of relations to other things, no objective point of view. Every vision is partial, there is no absolute or universal point of view, only portions of reality, a huge network of mirrors. This is true on the micro and macro levels. Particles going through slits in experiments and a human speeding on the motorway.
Some of the tangents here are incredibly interesting. Including 'changes to the terms of the question' for the mind body problem in philosophy. The distinction is simply removed by seeing meaning as a physical biological thing, not a mental state.
The impulse is 100% substantiated in the physical world, an evolutionary adaption based on a relation to the world. So there is no need to fret about mental vs physical, it's all physical, mental qualia are physical representations or relations of the world. Linked together through others. This removes the subject-object issue via entanglement. Elegant and radical. We, our "I" is the name of the natural processes naming themselves! Ha!
There is a good short point on the latest neuroscience of vision, explaining we don't see the world, rather we predict it and report back discrepancies. This is the world as a confirmed hallucination. Also explored in the outstanding "how emotions are made".
The book ends with a beautiful Prospero quote from the Tempest "we are such stuff as our dreams are made of, and our life is rounded with a sleep"
To be re-read!