Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution

by Carlo Rovelli

We must expect to have to modify our provincial metaphysical perspectives just as soon as we learn something new. We must take seriously the new things we learn about the world, even if they clash with our preconceptions about how reality is constituted. This seems to me an attitude that renounces the arrogance of possessing knowledge, while keeping faith with reason and our capacity to learn. Science is not a Depository of Truth, it is based on the awareness that there are no Depositories of Truth. The best way to learn is to interact with the world while seeking to understand it, readjusting our mental schemes to what we encounter and find. This respect for science as the source of our knowledge nurtures the naturalism of philosophers such as Willard Quine, for whom our knowledge itself is one of many natural processes and can be studied as such.