Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity

by Carlo Rovelli

The central point is rebellion against the renunciation of the desire to know: a declaration of faith in the comprehensibility of the world, a proud retaliation to those who remain satisfied with their own ignorance, who call infinite that which we don’t understand and delegate knowledge to elsewhere. Centuries have passed, and the text of Ecclesiasticus, along with the rest of the Bible can be found in countless homes, while Archimedes’ text is read only by the few. Archimedes was slaughtered by the Romans during the sacking of Syracuse, the last proud remnant of Magna Grecia to fall under the Roman yoke, during the expansion of that future empire which would soon adopt Ecclesiasticus as one of the foundational texts of its official religion, a position which it was to occupy there for more than a thousand years. During that millennium, the calculations made by Archimedes languished in a state of incomprehensibility: no one was able to use, or even to understand them.