Seven Brief Lessons On Physics, by Carlo Rovelli, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

This is the sort of book that could only have come from Italy. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that the essays on physics that are collected here in book form were originally printed as a weekly extra feature in an Italian newspaper. One cannot imagine an American newspaper filling out pages of information on writing about physics for the ordinary reader, but it is something that one could believe of a cultured Italian newspaper. The second reason why this book could only have come from Italy is that the author gratifies the nationalism of Italians by frequently referring to Italy in these essays when it is not strictly necessary for the subject matter but as a way of making the subject of physics more relatable to Italians. Does it really matter what the author felt when spending time in southern Italy, or how hot the Calabrian sun is, or that Einstein did some credit/no-credit studies on Physics in Italy? Not really, in the grand scheme of things, but it matters to the author as an Italian and to his original audience as Italians, and so these features remain even in translation when they no longer serve to make the book more appealing to non-Italian readers.

The book is less than one hundred pages and is organized around seven lessons. After a short preface, which explains the provenance of the book and how it came to be, the rest of the book is organized around different subjects that are fundamental to understanding contemporary physics. The first lesson is on the most beautiful of theories, in the not unreasonable opinion of the author, the theory of Special Relativity, which Einstein developed as a young man (1). This is followed by a discussion of quantum mechanics, which comes from the understanding that everything in the universe, even light itself, comes in quanta and is not entirely continuous (2). This is followed by a lesson on the (complicated and often uncertain) architecture of the cosmos (3). This is followed by a discussion of particle physics, including quarks and Boson-Higgs particles but not some of the ones proposed (4). After this the author talks about the paradox at the heart of our understanding of the universe between that which we can understand and that which works (5), which is often not intuitive. The sixth lesson looks at issues of probability, time, and the heat of black holes, all of which is very interesting material (6). The seventh lesson is the conclusion, which looks at the changing way that humanity has viewed itself as a consequence of changes in how we see the universe around us.

There is a great deal to be enjoyed by readers of this book. One of them is the fact that this book is elegant and short. I found myself charmed by the author’s efforts to appeal to an ordinary audience, even if his intended audience is Italian and not American, for example. This is a book that is not only about physics, which is a subject I have some interest in given my education, but is also a book about elegance and beauty. The author judges theories not only by their truth value but also for their beauty, and that is something worth appreciating and celebrating. There are a lot of complexities in physics, one of the most fundamental ones being that there are principles of physics that work very well on a practical basis but which do not make sense from a logical perspective, and other principles that might make logical sense but which are hard to impossible to prove and demonstrate and that do not fully unify the various elements of physics together. How this situation is to be resolved is not something that is immediately obvious, and the author is wise to reflect on the place of humanity and the recognition of human limits in understanding as well as an understanding of our own relative insignificance the more we understand the universe in which we live.