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A review by americalovesbooks
Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli
5.0
Carlo Rovelli is one of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists. He has done it again with his new book ‘Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution.’ I was excited to read this since I loved his other book ‘The Order of Time.’
Helgoland is a poetic argument that reality is relative. The world is fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness.
Does a chair exist if nobody sits on it? What if things only exist in their interactions with one another?
Expecting objects to have their own independent existence – independent of us, and any other objects – is actually a deep-seated assumption we make about the world. He claims the objects of quantum theory, such as a photon, electron, or other fundamental particles, are nothing more than the properties they exhibit when interacting with – in relation to – other objects.
According to Rovelli’s relational interpretation, these properties are all there is to the object: there is no underlying individual substance that “has” the properties.
On this view, the world is an intricate web of interrelations, such that objects no longer have their own individual existence independent from other objects – like an endless game of quantum mirrors. Moreover, there may well be no independent “metaphysical” substance constituting our reality that underlies this web.
The title of the book references a treeless island in the North Sea where Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution.
In the end:
“We are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which … there is nothing.”
Helgoland is a poetic argument that reality is relative. The world is fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness.
Does a chair exist if nobody sits on it? What if things only exist in their interactions with one another?
Expecting objects to have their own independent existence – independent of us, and any other objects – is actually a deep-seated assumption we make about the world. He claims the objects of quantum theory, such as a photon, electron, or other fundamental particles, are nothing more than the properties they exhibit when interacting with – in relation to – other objects.
According to Rovelli’s relational interpretation, these properties are all there is to the object: there is no underlying individual substance that “has” the properties.
On this view, the world is an intricate web of interrelations, such that objects no longer have their own individual existence independent from other objects – like an endless game of quantum mirrors. Moreover, there may well be no independent “metaphysical” substance constituting our reality that underlies this web.
The title of the book references a treeless island in the North Sea where Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution.
In the end:
“We are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which … there is nothing.”