Carlo Rovelli – Art of deconstructing time

Who we are? – I think this should be the initial question that struck the minds of evolved sapiens. Followed by a few other questions: Why are we here? What is our purpose? How big is this world? How everything came into existence? And it goes on. Every microsecond, we as a thinking species (are we the only thinking species in this world?) come up with a new or updated question. We have more questions than answers, a lot of questions with diverse answers and another lot of them with answers that keep changing along with human evolution. Ultimatum is to find a concrete "the answer" of oneness for everything or I would say the idea of "the singularity". Despite all our attempts, the basic question is still intact, until today sapiens are trying to find "the answer" to the very first question of human thinking - who we are?  On a different note, humans are equally benefited and affected with the derivatives that evolved in the process of finding an absolute answer to our initial doubt – both cultural and scientific byproducts.  

I should start writing about Carlo with this very initial question ‘Who we are?’ or a more refined one – What is this so-called world is all about? Are we going to find the final answer via Carlo? The answer is a big no. I would say, that humans can never find a final answer to the first question, just because we are ‘just’ humans and the world is much bigger than we imagine.  Carlo’s work is not to find “the answer” or a theory of everything. But he is working to expand human eyesight a bit. Something wider than Albert Einstein’s world or something smaller than Max Planck’s or Werner Heisenberg’s worlds. To begin with, Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist, one of the creators of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) which tries to bind the two grand human ideas about the universe; general relativity and quantum world. Or we can say one of the latest theories in the world of physics that tries to understand the depth of this universe. To fanatics of Big Bang Theory or Sheldon Cooper, LQG is another way like string theory that tries to understand the existence of the world.

So, what’s interesting about Carlo Rovelli, apart from him being a theoretical physicist? I think the following are the reasons that made me write this text:

• The fascinating deconstruction of time
• Understanding the limitations of human knowledge
• Politically vocal about our times through science 

Deconstructing the idea of everlasting time:

What is the time? Time is everything! Time is the answer to all the questions that we had, we have now, and we may have in future. Time decides everything and everything in this world are flowing through time. To put it simply, humans cannot write even a line or talk even a sentence without the notion of time. Or the human thinking process itself is strictly amalgamated within time.

Contrary to our popular belief, Prof. Rovelli says that "time" is just an illusion, we don’t have anything as time in real physical world or his theory just eliminated the idea of physical variable called time. It may sound absurd or even with zero sense, but it all started before hundred years when Albert Einstein just shifted the idea of time being an absolute entity toward relative.

Albert Einstein told us that time is relative. Time is not flowing in the same way as humans experience it. Time on earth is completely different from a star in a nearby galaxy. The stars that are visible in broad darkness are billions of light-years away. Light from a star that we see right now might be billions of years old, there are more chances that the star might have burned out already. Even the sunlight that we experience every day is eight minutes and twenty seconds older because it takes that much time for the sun rays to reach earth. If the sun vanishes suddenly, it will take eight minutes and twenty seconds for us to realize that we lost the only sun that we had. So, time is not at all absolute and it is not at all everything, time is relative it flows as per the physical conditions of the different regions of the universe. Even within the earth, we have these differences, but they are very minimal for humans to experience it or we just refute them.   

   

Time is not only physically relative but also relative to the human mind. Human experiences on time can be broadly categorized as physical time and psychological time. Physical time is the notion that we consider as absolute or the time derivative that we apply for every other physical event – a day which is 24 hours. Psychological time is the flow of time as per state our mind – weekends flow faster than weekdays.

Carlo’s world of loop quantum gravity is not ready to consider time as even relative. According to Carlo, time is an abstract calculation that makes a lot of things easier for human understanding. Or limitations of the human brain which perceives nature through time, possibly the easiest way for humans to relate ourselves with nature. The Gregorian calendar that we use would be the finest example to quote. If you could explore in-depth, we will know a lot of adjustments were made or are being made in the Gregorian calendar to simplify the idea of time. These adjustments are too complex for us to understand - popular illustration would be 29^th day of February every leap year. But few centuries of continuous training and usage made the Gregorian calendar easier for us.  Just because humans use it widely, doesn’t make the Gregorian calendar a perfect way to calculate time in days or months or years. We have adapted ourselves to these adjustments to make our life simpler.

This leads me to  Carlo’s qualms on the most astonishing factors of the notion time. Past, Present and future? He picks the understanding of “now” and explains that we don’t have an absolute “now” for the world. Carlo writes, “This might sound strange until you consider something as mundane as making an international call. You’re in New York, talking to friends in London. When their words reach your ears, milliseconds have passed, and “now” is no longer the same “now” as it was when the person on the line replied, I can hear you now.” If we apply this logic to my example of sun rays then the “now” of the first ray from the sun is entirely different from the first ray of sun on earth and the “now’s” varies by eight minutes and twenty seconds.

What is “Now” then? – we call it the precise moment, the very moment that I am writing this ‘word’. But to write that ‘word’ now, I need to think about that word in my mind, it must be converted as signals, it must reach my fingers, my fingers must type the word, the computer will take time to convert them into binaries and to visualize in my desktop. It takes the number of “now’s” to attain a common now. We can apply the same logic to many events. Hence a now becomes a combination of past, present and future. However, these time lapses are too negligible for the human to even consider or evaluate but that doesn’t make the time-lapses null or absent from the physical or real world. Human inability to understand or perceive makes them negligible.

The most fascinating aspect of Carlo’s understanding of this world is not just time but his artistic approach towards it – precisely like a poet. In the book, Order of Time, Carlo writes, “The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events. The difference between things and events is that things persist in time, events have a limited duration. Stone is a prototypical ‘thing’: we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.” Not just this, Carlo’s popular science texts are the best example to show his intimate relation with poems; every book and every topic in the books will have a poetic quote, mostly the ancient verses. I am not sure, but I think I have read in an interview in which Carlo said that “it is disheartening to separate poetry from science”. 

Human thoughts on the universe are limited, not even the size of DNA & the art of writing popular science texts:

Humans sturdiest certainty is that we are the strongest species. This very belief made us constructing the schema of evolution as a pyramid and put ourselves on the top. Are we really the strongest species? Before arguing on being the superior or strongest, the theory of evolution explains that only the fittest species will survive but not the strongest – the survival of the fittest, a phrase coined by the biologist/sociologist Herbert Spencer after reading Origin of Species. Humans understanding about this phrase is very cynical, we rephrase it as the survival of the strongest. I think we are neither the strongest nor fittest species in the world, rather we are the youngest species.

But what is special about human beings? – nothing.  Everything in the physical world carries information, regardless of the information being simple or complex. A single-photon carries information, collection of millions or billions of photons, we call it as light. A single photon is not visible to human eyes, but the collections of millions or billions of photons are visible to our eyes – sun rays, stars, lamp, fire etc... in the same way, humans are a complex package of information. Every organ, every cell, every chemical component in the human body has information and when put together makes the multifaceted creature called humans. Information is a natural entity which keeps flowing across the world. However, humans are the first known species to humans, to record information and carry it forward artificially – from speech, writing, painting until the internet and we call it as knowledge. The collection of ‘knowledge’ makes humans think beyond the necessities of food or survival. For example, the sapiens of today’s world is a collection of 400000 years of human information/knowledge.        

Does this make sapiens great? We trust that the world is designed by divine power for humans. Almost all the sacred texts written by humans echoed this certainty via different discourses. Until 546–610 BCE (nearly 2000+ years ago) humans think that earth has a flat base or is the centre of the universe with heavens above. Earth and heavens are made for humans, even today many of us trust in this theocratical idea – maybe in a refined way, that earth is not the centre of this universe rather it is a small planet in a planetary system somewhere in the margin of an ordinary galaxy which is billions of light-years away from the centre of the human-known universe. Irrespective of all these scientific understanding, we still trust that god created this small planet for humans. On the other hand, regardless of trusting the stories of eden, we are covetous about occupying the universe.

What makes humans think this way - putting ourselves on top of an imaginary order? Carlo opens his book ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’ with a dazzling line, he writes, “We are obsessed with ourselves. We study our history, our psychology, our philosophy, our gods. Much of our knowledge revolves around humans themselves as if we were the most important thing in the universe.” 

Despite our beliefs, we know very little about the world, human thoughts or knowledge is very limited. We, as humans, always have our own inhibitions and confinements in understanding the world, I think it is restricted to ourselves. What we know about the world is little and mostly only about us or for ourselves. However, we are still in the expedition of understanding the universe. We might not understand everything, but we keep progressing in our grand voyage to answer the initial question of human thinking. We progressed from being the centre of the universe to a tiny planet. Or from Newton’s world of space, time & particles to Einstein’s fields & particles. Carlo understands our limitations extensively. As a scientist, his admiration about his predecessors is not just about how they found new answers rather how they are sceptical about their answers. 

In his book ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems,’ he has devoted the final topic “Mystery” exclusively for scepticism. He says that science is born from this act of humility, which leads to critical thinking or scientific thinking. He mentions about Socrates’ usage of the phrases - “I believe”, “I am not sure” - while explaining the shape of the earth. Carlo even remembered that famous phrase “I think” used by Charles Darwin. Carlo has written broadly about the ever-existing “uncertainty” in the depths of human minds, which makes him more than a theoretical physicist.

Apart from being a physicist, Carlo Rovelli is one of the greatest philosophers of science. Almost all the popular science books that he has written or the interviews he has given or the extensive speeches that he has delivered across the planet dealing with one key thing – “knowledge or critical thinking”. His book Anaximander is one of the best pop culture text that talks about the history and the philosophy of science – particularly the history and philosophy of critical thinking, the very basics of science. Even two steps further, I would say it is the best text written by Carlo (obviously I haven’t read his original science literature). Anaximander takes the reader deep into the world of questioning. According to Carlo, Anaximander is the first scientist. Carlo says that Anaximander is the one who started the journey of questioning or scientific thinking. He was the beginning point to question this world as a natural entity rather than an act of divinity. By using Anaximander as an allegory of critical thinking, Carlo explores the world of critical thinking or scientific thinking – What is critical thinking? From where was it born? What makes critical thinking the base for human survival, its limitations, the relationship between democracy and evolution of scientific approaches?

Like many of the introductions/reviews written on ‘Order of Time’ or ‘Seven Brief Lessons on Physics’ by non-science writers, I also wanted to say that I am not a physicist or a science student, physics used to be one of the most hated topics all my life.  I was certain that physics or science are areas out of my reach. But logics always plays a key role for me in exploring the idea of survival – the lucidities learnt through cognitive scepticism. Obsession for the philosophy of nature started over a post alcoholic midnight conversation in the streets of Madras when my friend told that ‘Time is an illusion’. Later Carlo’s interview in New Philosopher journal made me buy ‘Seven Brief Lessons On Physics’, which lead me to ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’, in turn, it's lead to the next book which is a more spectacular one ‘The Order Of Time’ and then I reached the epitome ‘Anaximander’. Before reading Carlo, I have read only three other obvious popular science texts – Time, Brief Answers To The Big Questions by Stephen Hawking and Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.

Entering Carlo’s world is an act of entering a black hole, where you cannot escape rather you have to get along with the captivating images of uncertainty. Carlo’s black hole is filled with questions, equations and lot of questions – most of them put forward with poetic aesthetics. These questions help humans to think beyond horizons that we built for ourselves - the idea of the sapiens-centric world may dissolve into nothingness.

Reality is equally philosophical and political:

In an interaction with ‘The Guardian’s’ chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins, Carlo mentioned that, as a student, he dreamed of “a world without boundaries, without state, without war, without religion, without family, without school, without private property.” And he continues by saying they are too radical, and it is hard, trying to share possessions, trying to live without jealousy. Carlo’s student days were filled with activism against power and dream of an egalitarian world. He even denied the compulsory military service and was detained briefly. Although, in the same interaction with Charlotte Higgins, Carlo mentioned his dream was a dream for small things; we can find strong traces of his roots even today in most of his writings, speeches – he is one of the strongest anti-fascist, anti-right wing, pro-democratic voices within the science community.

As a human being, Carlo is very much concerned and doubtful about our future; he says climatic changes and human greed will play a greater impact on human future – it acts as the subtext of all his literature, interviews, speeches etc. Almost all his books ended with the philosophical quest of the human future, which tries to convey the beauty of diversified humans’ thoughts and co-existence.

Also, as a philosopher and physicist Carlo try to tie both the disciplines together, which is completely contrasting to modern-day physicists’ firm thought on philosophy. At least I am reminded of Stephen Hawking’s famous statement - “Philosophy is dead”. Even further, I think someone mentioned that post-war philosopher are very curious about language; rather than the basic question of existence, the question has been shifted to the later world physicists. We may have to have a lot of dialogues around this, skipping them for now.

Anaximander is one real example of Carlo’s inquisitiveness to link philosophy and physics, also it is his personal political statement on human existence. From the beginning until the end Anaximander explores the philosophy of one of the basic acts of human existence – the critical thinking. The topics dedicated to the evolution of knowledge, democracy and cultural crossbreeding speaks powerfully on the necessity of freethinking and migrations. In today’s world, right-wing ideologies occupy power using anti-migration sentiments, but Carlo says without migration societies cannot progress into the future – an anti-migration society would decay into the past. To prove how migration benefits human societies, he used Anaximander and evolution of critical or scientific thinking from Miletus to Alexandria to the rest of the world.

Something more on what makes Carlo even significant. In general, the mainstream European understanding of migration is colonization or in their own words finding new worlds. In contrast to this mainstream belief, Carlo is critical of colonization. In Anaximander, he writes what European colonizers did in The Americas or Africa is no way lesser than the Nazi regime’s genocides. As a sympathizer of postcolonial schools, it is not that I am expecting a European to accept the colonial genocides. Rather the act of acknowledging the blunders of previous generations makes Carlo closer to my thoughts.              

  

Further, he has written extensively about how the expansion of writing from priesthoods or power walls to general public and birth of democracy paved the way for scientific thinking. Democracy always gives the space for free-thinking and questioning. Being a person from Indian sub-continent this is something very relevant because the priesthoods of Indian sub-continent created an artificial barrier between knowledge and the general public, preventing most of the population from gaining the knowledge. Even today they are trying to possess knowledge as their private property – by using various other post-colonial mechanisms – for example, merit. Democracy leads to writing and questioning. Questioning helps humans to progress further, without questions or doubts we would be an extinct species already.

Carlo, like few other theoretical physicists, explores the birth of divinity, how science breaks the stereotypes around theocracy and the rise of anti-science hoaxes in the current information world etc. Throughout his writings, we can explore the progressive political patterns which may help humans in understanding the betterment of co-existence. Maybe we may have a day where Carlo’s small things will become real.

I think Carlo is one of the greatest living philosophers and theoretical physicist. His quest or ever-burning questions will help sapiens to co-exist even better. Maybe this text should be concluded with the last lines of Carlo’s Anaximander –

We do not know where this adventure is leading, but scientific thinking – continuous critical revision of accepted knowledge, openness to the possibility of rebellion against any belief, the ability to explore new images of the world and create novel ones – represent a major chapter in the slow evolution of the history of humankind. It is a chapter opened by Anaximander; we are immersed in it, curious to see where it may lead.