Nicholas Cannariato writes:

The nature of time. Black holes. Ancient philosophers. The struggle for democracy. Climate change. Buddhist philosophy. In his new collection of essays and articles, Carlo Rovelli, one of the world’s most renowned physicists, broadens his writing to include questions of politics, justice and how we live now.

“I look at myself as much more than a physicist,” he said in an interview at his home in London, Ontario, on a cold, calm day in February. The new book, “There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness,” published by Riverhead on May 10, is the result of all his “wandering around and being curious in this space of culture at large,” he added.

There is a thread, however, through the myriad topics he covers: the interdependence of all things — and what makes that interdependence profound.

A theoretical physicist and professor at the Centre de Physique Théorique at Aix-Marseille University in France and an adjunct professor of philosophy at Western University in Canada, Rovelli has spent much of his career on the theory of loop quantum gravity, an area of theoretical physics that seeks to unite Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics.

Under the theory, the universe would not be continuous, like, say, the sea looks from the shore. Rather, it would be composed of what Rovelli calls “elementary grains” or “quanta of space.” After thinking about his books and discussing their ideas with him, I started to think of the universe as if it were a vast sea of beads, where everything that happens, each “grain,” is a bead directly affecting the next.

Rovelli’s thinking on the nature of time began much earlier — and the story, which he described in “A Stupefying Story,” a piece included in his new book, reveals much about his approach to life and writing. He first meaningfully considered the nature of time during his psychedelic experiences as a teen. The “magical nights” he experienced, he wrote, left him “with a calm awareness of the prejudices of our rigid mental categories.” [Continue reading…]