Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

by Carlo Rovelli

We are a species which is naturally moved by curiosity, the only one left of a group of species (the genus Homo) made up of a dozen equally curious species. The other species in the group have already become extinct; some, like the Neanderthals, quite recently, roughly thirty thousand years ago. It is a group of species which evolved in Africa, akin to the hierarchical and quarrelsome chimpanzees – and even more closely akin to the bonobos, the small, peaceful, cheerfully egalitarian and promiscuous type of chimps. A group of species which repeatedly went out of Africa in order to explore new worlds, and went far: as far, eventually, as Patagonia – and as far, eventually, as the moon. It is not against nature to be curious: it is in our nature to be so.