Carlo Rovelli's latest book, On the Equality of All Things, is an attempt to integrate principles and theories from physics into a broader worldview: one of the essential unity of all things, and the profoundly relational and perspectival nature of the universe.
Rovelli, who directs a quantum gravity research group in Marseille, has written several books on physics for the general reader, including the global bestseller Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. In his new work, he writes: "Electrons and minds, stones and laws, judgments and galaxies do not essentially differ in nature from one another. They are notions that illuminate each other."
Rovelli echoes concepts that have been around for millennia in ancient thought, including Hinduism and Buddhism, from whose sacred texts he quotes. But what sets him apart from other modern writers who preach the oneness of it all is that he grounds his ideas in scientific theory rather than theology or new age conjecture.
A dense volume of ideas
On the Equality of All Things is a slender volume holding an extraordinary density of ideas. Translator Simon Carnell, himself a poet, maintains the clarity and concision expected from Rovelli's writing. In six chapters, or "lessons", Rovelli lays out the philosophical significance of what he believes is a major scientific revolution happening right now.
The first lesson refers to his theory of relational quantum mechanics to ask readers to abandon the notion that the world is made up of things with fixed properties. Rather, physical systems have properties relative to other physical systems. Also, everything is moving all the time, and there is no fixed point around which we are in motion.
The second lesson takes aim at the idea of linearity. Rovelli urges acceptance of circularity and questions the need to identify the ultimate foundation of things, when in fact, "it's turtles all the way down." The lessons continue: the world is not made up of things at all but processes. "Even a stone is a process," and so are we. Time itself is mutable and passes at different speeds in different places. Our knowledge of anything can only ever be partial.
Perspective and interconnectedness
Rovelli admits the vertigo this can induce. "The resulting image of reality is haunting. Every fact is only a fact relative to something else, and even the fact that a fact is relative to something else is itself relative. There is no ground floor." Yet, in contrast to the bleakness that can shroud scientific accounts of the universe, Rovelli's telling validates our messy, subjective human experiences. "None of this prevents us from describing the world from one perspective. Ours."
The book takes its place as part of a movement that asks us to see the world as a set of interconnected relationships, sitting alongside the work of mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, physiologist Denis Noble and nature writer Robert Macfarlane. Rovelli's emphasis on perspective and relationality in physics echoes similar intellectual turns in social anthropology, ecology and biology.
Distancing himself from the more hubristic elements of the Enlightenment – an emphasis on certainty, linearity, and overconfidence in Reason – Rovelli asks us to embrace "the nimble lightness of circularity, complexity, ambiguity, metaphors, emotions, the acceptance of uncertainty and change."
A powerful conclusion
His refusal to denigrate human culture as inferior to or incompatible with hard science is refreshing. He observes wryly that the term "consciousness" has superseded the word "soul" because it is perceived to be more scientific, even though it is just as nebulous. Provided we understand that physical processes underlie everything, Rovelli sees no reason why we may not "calmly speak of the soul and emotions just as we speak of tables even if tables are collections of atoms."
Some of the science in the book required a level of intellectual scaffolding that a rusty physics A-level did not provide, particularly at his explanation of loop quantum gravity. Yet even without a full grasp of the granularity of spacetime, engaging with the book as an internally coherent work of philosophy and literature is rewarding enough.
Rovelli's conclusion is powerful: we are physical systems dancing among other physical systems, and the world "is our blood brother." We're at home, among family. Perhaps it's time we honoured that kinship.
