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Carol Rovelli: Reality is not What it Seems

'To live with uncertainty may be difficult. There are those who prefer any certainty, even if unfounded, to the uncertainty which comes from recognising our own limits.'

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Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He writes:

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'There are some who prefer to believe in a story just because it was believed in by the tribe’s ancestors rather than bravely accept uncertainty.


Ignorance can be scary. Out of fear we can tell ourselves calming stories: up there, beyond the stars, there is an enchanted garden, with a gentle father who will welcome us to his arms. It doesn’t matter if this is true; it is reassuring.


There is always in the world someone who pretends to tells us the ultimate answers. The world is full of people who say that they have The Truth. Because they have got it from the fathers; they have read it in the Great Book; they have received it directly from a god; they have found it in the depths of themselves.

 
Maybe after all there is a grain of truth in a joke reported by St. Augustine: What was God doing before he created the world? He was preparing Hell for those who seek to scrutinize deep mysteries.

 
For my part, I prefer to look our ignorance in the face, accept it and seek to look just a little further; to try to understand that which we are able to understand. Not just because accepting this ignorance is the way to avoid being entangled in superstition and prejudices - but to accept our ignorance...seems to be the truest, the most beautiful and above all, the honest way.’

 
In his conclusion he writes:


‘The world is more extraordinary and profound than any of the fables of our forefathers...

It is world that does not exist in time and does not develop in time.

 
A world without infinity, where the infinitely small does not exist because there is a minimum scale to this teeming beneath which there is nothing.’

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