Quotes from Carlo Rovelli

The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.

In the elementary equations of the world,13 the arrow of time appears only where there is heat.* The link between time and heat is therefore fundamental: every time a difference is manifested between the past and the future, heat is involved. In every sequence of events that becomes absurd if projected backward, there is something that is heating up.

Dances of love intertwine such graceful girls lit by the moon on these clear nights. (I, 4) THE SLOWING DOWN OF TIME

Our entire current technology is founded on the use of a physical thing-electromagnetic waves-that was not discovered empirically: it was predicted by Maxwell, simply by searching for the mathematical description accounting for the intuition Faraday got from bobbins and needles. This is the outstanding power of theoretical physics.

Our intuitions have developed on the basis of our limited experience.

A handful of types of elementary particles, which vibrate and fluctuate constantly between existence and nonexistence and swarm in space, even when it seems that there is nothing there, combine together to infinity like the letters of a cosmic alphabet to tell the immense history of galaxies; of the innumerable stars; of sunlight; of mountains, woods, and fields of grain; of the smiling faces of the young at parties; and of the night sky studded with stars.

Thinking of the world as a collection of events, of processes, is the way that allows us to better grasp, comprehend, and describe it.

Looking at the sun going down, the eyes of Copernicus had seen the world turning. Looking at a glass of still water, the eyes of Boltzmann saw atoms and molecules frenziedly moving.

information is the measure of the number of possible alternatives for something.

There is no ultimate or mysterious essence to understand that is the true essence of our being.

The growth of entropy is nothing other than the ubiquitous and familiar natural increase of disorder. This is what Boltzmann understood.

The proposal is not well received, because people are attached to local time. In 1883, a compromise is reached with the idea of dividing the world into time zones, thereby standardizing time only within each zone. In this way, the discrepancy between twelve on the clock and local midday is limited to a maximum of about thirty minutes. The proposal is gradually accepted by the rest of the world and clocks begin to be synchronized between different cities.

The difference between past and future does not lie in the elementary laws of motion; it does not reside in the deep grammar of nature. It is the natural disordering that leads to gradually less particular, less special situations.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS?

Albert [Einstein] was reading Kant and attending occasional lectures at the University of Pavia: for pleasure, without being registered there or having to think about exams. It is thus that serious scientists are made.

Time and space are real phenomena. But they are in no way absolute; they are not at all independent from what happens; they are not as different from the other substances of the world, as Newton had imagined them to be. We can think of a great Newtonian canvas on which the story of the world is drawn. But this canvas is made of the same stuff that everything else in the world is made of, the same substance that constitutes stone, light, and air: it is made of fields.

Our intuitive idea of the present, the ensemble of all events happening "now" in the universe, is an effect of our blindness: our inability to recognize small temporal intervals. An illegitimate extrapolation from our parochial experience.

Geçmi? ile gelecek aras?ndaki fark yaln?zca ?s? söz konusu oldu?u zaman vard?r. Gelece?i geçmi?ten ay?ran temel olay, ?s?n?n daha s?cak nesnelerden daha so?uk nesnelere geçmesidir.

The notion of "particularity" is born only at the moment we begin to see the universe in a blurred and approximate way.

The confusion between these two diverse human activities—inventing stories and following traces in order to find something—is the origin of the incomprehension and distrust of science shown by a significant part of our contemporary culture. The separation is a subtle one: the antelope hunted at dawn is not far removed from the antelope deity in that night's storytelling. The

We often say that causes precede effects and yet, in the elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between "cause" and "effect."* There

Science begins with a vision.

Is?, s?cak nesnelerden so?uk nesnelere mutlak bir yasan?n zorlamas?yla geçmez: Yaln?zca bu yöndeki geçi?i daha yüksek bir olas?l?kla olur. Bunun nedeni iste ?udur: S?cak nesneye ait daha h?zl? bir atomun daha so?uk bir atoma çarpmas? ve enerjisinin biraz?n? b?rakmas? ve bunun tersinin olmamas?, istatistiksel olarak daha yüksek bir olas?l?kt?r.

The answer is that each element corresponds to one solution of the main equation of quantum mechanics. The whole of chemistry emerges from a single equation.