If you like one-night reads, don’t miss Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.
The book, which about 80 pages, started as a series of newspaper columns. You might guess that an old newspaperman would like that. But through the years, I came to realize that most Americans just don’t read much about science. I admire efforts to interest ordinary people in the sciences and to encourage people to appreciate some of the difficulties.
Rovelli works on two themes. First, he gives us a tour of physics. The first lesson is a wonderful summary of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The second is a brief on quantum mechanics. What we know about the first and second lessons is that they are contradictory.
For many people of my father’s generation, there was profound concern about conflicts between faith and science. I’m much more interested in the conflict between science and science.
One of the efforts to find a synthesis involves quantum gravity. If you have the cast of mind to be interested in these notes, you really ought to become familiar with the term. And Rovelli will get you there.
The second theme of this book is on what doing science is like. It’s like following a trail, and mainly what you do is doubt — yourself, the conflicting data, the competing pictures of the world that are contradictory and thus can’t both be right.
My favorite sentence in the book: “Genius hesitates.”
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