There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy and the World

by Carlo Rovelli

Galileo did not build his new physics by rebelling against a dogma, or by forgetting Aristotle. On the contrary, having learned deeply from him, he worked out how to modify aspects of the Aristotelian conceptual cathedral: between himself and Aristotle there is not incommensurability but dialogue.

I believe this is also the case at the borders between different cultures, individuals and peoples. It is not true, as today we love to repeat, that different cultural worlds are mutually impermeable and untranslatable. The opposite is true: the borders between theories, disciplines, eras, cultures, peoples and individuals are remarkably porous, and our knowledge is fed by the exchanges across this highly permeable spectrum. Our knowledge is the result of a continuous development of this dense web of exchanges. What interests us most is precisely this exchange: to compare, to exchange ideas, to learn and to build from difference. To mix, not to keep things separate.

Nabokov himself has written: “A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”

“How beautiful youth is, how nonetheless fleeting! Let anyone seeking happiness enjoy it: tomorrow brings nothing but uncertainty.”

“the works of the past are like the flowers from which bees collect nectar to make honey.”

What can the university offer us now? It can offer the same riches that Copernicus found: the accumulated knowledge of the past, together with the liberating idea that knowledge can be transformed and become transformative. This, I believe, is the true significance of a university. It is the treasure house in which human knowledge is devotedly protected, it provides the lifeblood on which everything that we know in the world depends, and everything that we want to do. But it is also the place where dreams are nurtured: where we have the youthful courage to question that very knowledge, in order to go forward, in order to change the world.

More frequently, the big dreams founder against the force of daily life. They are short-lived or even momentary intervals; they come crashing down and are consigned to oblivion.

Historical movements are made by ideas, ethical judgments, passions, ways of seeing the world. Sometimes they leave behind traces that continue to work deeply upon the mental fabric of civilization, changing it irreversibly. Revolution is an old mole that burrows deep into the soil of history. On occasion, it pops its head out. It is the fantasy of those who rule that nothing will change. But then, the old mole appears when least expected. Our civilization, the set of values in which we believe, is the result of countless ideals, of the vision of those who have dared to look and to dream, intensely, beyond the present.

It was a dream of building a world where there would be no huge social inequalities, no male domination of women: a place without borders, without armies, without poverty. It was the idea of replacing all competitive struggle for power with cooperation, of leaving behind the bigotries, fascisms, nationalisms, the narrow identitarianism that had led the preceding generations to exterminate one hundred million human beings in two world wars. These were far-reaching dreams, envisaging a world without private property, without envy or jealousy, without hierarchy, without churches, without powerful states, without atomistic closed family units, without dogma. A world, in a word, that was free. Somewhere with no need for the excesses of consumerism, where you could work for pleasure, not for getting, spending or social climbing.

Poetry and science are both manifestations of the spirit that creates new ways of thinking the world, in order to understand it better. Great science and great poetry are both visionary, and sometimes may arrive at the same insights. The culture of today that keeps science and poetry so far apart is essentially foolish, to my way of thinking, because it makes us less able to see the complexity and the beauty of the world as revealed by both.

We live in a universe where ignorance prevails. We know many things, but there is a great deal more that we don’t know. We don’t know who we will encounter tomorrow in the street, we don’t know the causes of many illnesses, we don’t know the ultimate physical laws that govern the universe, we don’t know who will win the next election, we don’t really know what is good for us and what is bad. We don’t know if there will be an earthquake tomorrow. In this essentially uncertain world, it would be foolish to ask for absolute certainty. Whoever boasts of being certain is usually the least reliable. But this doesn’t mean either that we are completely in the dark. Between certainty and complete uncertainty there is a precious intermediate space—and it is in this intermediate space that our lives and our thoughts unfold.

It is probability that makes life interesting. It is because of probability that we can be touched by the unexpected. It is probability that allows us to remain open to further knowledge. We are limited and mortal, we can learn to accept the limits of our knowledge—but we can still aim to learn and to look for the foundation of this knowledge. It is not certainty. It is reliability.

Philosophical thought opens windows, frees us from prejudices, reveals incongruities and leaps of logic, suggests new methodological approaches and in general opens up the minds of scientists to new possibilities. It has always done so in the past, and it continues to do so.

Our knowledge is incomplete, but it is organic: it is constantly growing, and every part of it has influence over every other part. A science that closes its ears to philosophy fades into superficiality; a philosophy that pays no attention to the scientific knowledge of its time is obtuse and sterile. It betrays its own deepest roots, which are evident in the etymology of philosophy: the love of knowledge.

Do all these mistakes and changes of opinion take something away from our admiration of Albert Einstein? Not at all. If anything, the opposite is the case. They teach us something instead, I believe, about the nature of intelligence. Intelligence is not about stubborn adherence to your own opinions. It requires readiness to change and even discard those opinions. In order to understand the world, you need to have the courage to experiment with ideas and not fear failure, to constantly revise your opinions, so as to make them work better.

The Einstein who makes more errors than anyone else is precisely the same Einstein who succeeds in understanding more about nature than anyone else, and these are complementary and necessary aspects of the same profound intelligence: the audacity of thought, the courage to take risks, the lack of faith in received ideas—including, crucially, one’s own. To have the courage to make mistakes, to change one’s ideas, not once but repeatedly, in order to discover. In order to arrive at understanding. Being right is not the important thing—trying to understand is.

Everyone finds slightly ridiculous the distortions of history caused by the national perspective of others. No one reflects upon how ridiculous is their own.

National identities are nothing more than political theater.

Localism and nationalism are not only miscalculations, they draw power from their emotional appeal: they offer an identity. Politics likes to play upon our insatiable desire to belong. “Foxes have dens, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head . . .” The nation offers just such a home, a fictitious one: it is a fake, but it costs little and pays politically. Not that we don’t have national identities: we do have them. But each of us is a crossroads of multiple, layered identities. Putting the nation first means betraying all our other identities. Not because we are all equal in the world, but because we are different within each nation. Not because we don’t need a home, but because we have better and more dignified homes outside the grotesque theater of nationalism: our families, our fellow travelers, the community we share values with, spread throughout the world. Whoever we are, we are not alone: we are many. And we have a wonderful place to call home: the Earth, and a marvelous, variegated tribe of brothers and sisters with whom we may feel at home and identify with: humankind.

The difficult life of Marie Curie and her courage, rigor and integrity are a source of inspiration to everyone, to both women and men of science alike. Her clashes with the bigotry, obtuseness and downright stupidity of patriotism and “defense against foreigners,” her unstintingly serious gaze, the richness of her scientific legacy and the clarity and generosity of her life have remained exemplary. Albert Einstein said of her that she was the only person never to be corrupted by fame.

A main source of the emotions that give power to the right, and above all to the far right, is not the feeling of being strong. It is, on the contrary, the fear of being weak.

What can we learn from this? I think it teaches us that in order to avoid catastrophes we do not need to defend ourselves against others: we need to fight against our fear of them.

The heat of black holes involves both general relativity, namely the theory that describes the black hole itself, and quantum theory. Currently there is not yet consensus on a complete theory combining general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the heat of black holes is an indication of how to look for this combination. It is a theoretical benchmark for all attempts to solve the problem of combining the two great physics theories of the twentieth century. Black holes are not just amazing real objects in the heavens. They are also a laboratory for theoretically testing our ideas about space, time and quanta.

Churchill clearly saw the limits of science. “We need scientists in the world,” he writes in 1958, “but not a world of scientists.” And he adds: “If, with all the resources of modern science, we find ourselves unable to avert world famine, we shall all be to blame.” But he was profoundly aware of the central role of scientific thought for humanity; of the importance of politically supporting it, of listening to it and of using it. Above all, he was aware of the great advantage it offered in allowing him to come to political decisions based on the facts—the simple secret that has contributed significantly to British and then American political supremacy in the past two centuries. Churchill knew how to think with the clarity of scientific intelligence.

We are not the masters of the world, we are not immortal; we are, as we have always been, like leaves in the autumn wind. We are not waging a battle against death. That battle we must inevitably lose, as death prevails anyway. What we are doing is struggling, together, to buy one another more days on Earth. For this short life, despite everything, seems beautiful to us, now more than ever.