Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Carlo Rovelli
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Carlo Rovelli
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
In clear, elegant prose, Rovelli guides the reader through a whirlwind tour of some of the biggest ideas in physics. His passion for his chosen field is evident on every page.
These are complex ideas, but Mr. Rovelli’s avowed mission is to convey the beauty of modern physics, if not its convoluted underbelly. Given the book’s brevity, peripheral topics whoosh by like signposts along a superhighway.
The essays in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics arrive like shots of espresso, which you can consume the way the Italians do, quickly and while standing up. As slim as a volume of poetry, Mr. Rovelli’s book also has that tantalizing quality that good books of poems have; it artfully hints at meanings beyond its immediate scope.
Seven Brief Lessons does not shy away from philosophy and it is an admirable testament, I think, to the fact that philosophy and natural science, although perhaps never one and the same, must grapple with each other. None of Rovelli's 'lessons' left me satisfied. But in a good way. They all left me wanting more.
There is the nagging sense that a book like this is meant to hook people normally terrified by 'weighty' scientific thought — a kind of 'Physics for Dummies,' which you can read in 45 minutes — and to get parents to plunk down the cash so that precocious Susie, as she heads into next year’s AP classes, can be one further up still. Feels like a quick-draw marketing move to me, and reads like one as well, in that you can read this book once, and there’s not much more to get from it..
...a spare, poetic, and thoughtful look at the major revolutions in the field.
The chapters are manageable chunks of famous theories, most recognizable even to those of us who don’t happen to have a Ph.D. Mr. Rovelli hits full stride in the fifth lesson, where he deals with loop quantum gravity theory — his area of expertise.