Rehumanising science | Carlo Rovelli - Part 2
Philosophy For Our Times
Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli discusses the intersection of quantum gravity and ancient philosophies like Taoism and Confucianism. He
Key takeaways
- Carlo Rovelli rejects the search for an ultimate reality, focusing instead on what happens during specific measurements and relations.
- The concept of 'the equality of all things' draws direct inspiration from ancient Chinese Taoist texts.
Main topics
- Quantum Gravity
- Taoism and Confucianism
Notable quotes
There's no ultimate story.
Conclusion
The episode provides a profound argument for integrating scientific di
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Forget the ultimate reality. The right question, physics in a sense is on the wrong track. If the question is, what is the ultimate story? There's no ultimate story. And I am doing quantum gravity, okay? I'm the kind of guy who the other think, oh, Carlo is looking for the ultimate story. I'm not looking for the ultimate story. I'm looking what happened if you look very, very small and make certain measurements. or what happened at the end of the life of Black Hole, what happened at Big Bang, to complete things that we do not know about nature. But that not the ultimate story is not more ultimate. I find this bullshit. It's tautology. Speaker 2 (0:44) Hi, this is Philosophy for Our Times. I'm Ozbir, and today I'm speaking with Carlo Rovelli. In this two-part interview, we discuss scientific realism, Buddhist philosophy, quantum gravity, and why Carlo thinks it's time to rehumanize science. Hope you enjoy. Speaker 2 (1:05) So you don't believe that there's a significant difference between objects in nature and persons or humans? Good. That we are physical entities? Speaker 1 (1:16) Good answer. That's exactly the right question to ask. That's exactly the right question to ask. And the answer, of course, for me is no. And in fact, the title of my book on the equality of all things, it's precisely an answer to your question, right? That's what the title means. There's no difference whatsoever between Speaker 1 (1:40) natural objects and mental objects, between culture and nature, between, in fact, between living beings and dead beings, between men and women, between... This is the equality of all things. And the same kind of relationality that we see between us and the universe, between our thinking, between language and the world, in early Wittgensteinian terms. This kind of relationality, these are all just specific examples of a general way nature works, which is relationality between one thing to the other. So I'm deeply Spinozian in this way. I mean, the world is one, it's not many. It's the same. We're just part of the story. We're one of the elements of the story. And the... Speaker 1 (2:35) One of the most beautiful, even if very, to some extent, primitive, even if very deep, expression of all that is the book. It's a Chinese book from which I've stolen the title on the equality of all things. It's an incredibly beautiful title. When I found it in that book, I said, well, how could anybody come up with such a beautiful title? It's a Tuan Tsi. It's one of the classic. greatest classics in Chinese philosophy. It's very ancient, it's roughly the same time of Confucius, so we're talking a few centuries before our era. And it's a beautiful, beautiful text, it's a very long text, it's beautiful written, it's beautiful literature also, like Plato. Plato is fantastic philosophy and also fantastic literature. There are not many things like that. And that's also great literature. It's not dialogues, it's just stories, a lot of stories. But one of the main ideas there against Confucius, right? Confucius is all, in Chinese philosophy, the two huge streams. One is Confucianism, which is nature and humanity. And it's all about the difference. The difference that we construct, right? the things, the law of nature against the normative, mental, abstract story that we humans have or access to or whatever. So all Confucianism is about focus on we you... Everything makes us human different from nature. While the opposite stream of Chinese culture, the other great river of Chinese philosophy is Taoism. It's the opposite. It's everything that makes us human just parts of nature. And of course, that resonates with modern scientists much more, right? Because we are part of nature. I believe, this is my deep belief, if I have one belief, is that I am a piece of nature like anything else, okay? And we as a... community of thinkers, we're just one of the many phenomena in nature. And as one of the many phenomena of nature, we relate to the rest in the way everything relates to everything. So our knowledge itself has to be understood. And here I think... It's what scientists should work on. We shouldn't send ourselves as natural beings. Not in the stupid sense. Oh, everything is atoms. And everything else is illusion. Come on, it's not illusion. Everything else is reality. Reality, it's not the components. Reality is the relation, the combinations, the complexity of the world. Remember Nagarjuna. Reality is the collection of the apparent. Forget the ultimate reality. The right question, physics in a sense is on the wrong track. If the question is what is the ultimate story? There's no ultimate story. And I am doing quantum reality. I'm the kind of guy who the other think, oh, Carlo is looking for the ultimate story. I'm not looking for the ultimate story. I'm looking what happened if you look very, very small and make certain measurements or what happened at the end of the life of Black Hole, what happened at Big Bang, to complete things that we do not know about nature. But then not the ultimate story is not more ultimate than our conversation or, you know, the importance of my love or the importance. Everything is ultimate from its own perspective. Speaker 2 (6:32) So I want to ask you about quantum gravity, but before that, actually, I thought about the way Eastern philosophy describes humans as part of nature, as you said. Now, of course, I understand... Careful, some Eastern philosophy. Some Eastern, of course. Speaker 1 (6:51) Let's get out of this wrong habit of saying, oh, Eastern philosophy says that. Eastern philosophy says anything is the opposite of anything. Speaker 2 (7:00) Of course, yeah, there are many streams of Eastern philosophy. Now, of course, our understanding of nature today arguably is quite different to the understanding of nature people had back then. Do you think we're talking about the same nature as Eastern philosophy did or has the term changed over the course of history? Speaker 1 (7:26) It's much more similar than what the differences imply, in my opinion. Of course, in different historical systems, within different cultures, the same terms take different connotations. There's no doubt about that. Speaker 1 (7:48) But in general, I believe in the possibility of dialogue and talking to one another much more than what some... Speaker 1 (8:02) contemporary way of thinking insist. I mean, you can read Aristotle and understand his terms. You might misunderstand his terms. Fine. Okay. No, of course. But I can misunderstand your terms. You're in London and I'm now in Spain. We have a slight difference. So there's, of course, there's always this, we never have a perfect language, but nevertheless, we have a language. And when... Aristotle says the sun, and I say the sun, we're talking about absolutely the same sun. Even if, you know, my knowledge of the sun is totally different than the one of Aristotle. I mean, I know how big it is, the nuclear process that happened, why it's hot. He didn't know anything about that. Speaker 1 (8:51) But that is that thing there, the sun, okay, is the sun. And when the Chinese, the early Taoists talk about nature, the Tao, the Tao is a mysterious term in Chinese philosophy. Sometimes it's related with God, sometimes it's related with the flow, sometimes it's related with the path. The closest sort of literally meaning is the path. the road, the way, the walking, the travel, the happening. And it's a very, very general name, Tao, which is used by the flow of everything, the happening of everything, or the way, the rule that governs the happening of everything, how things happen. It's a Tao. You can read all sorts of stories about how it's translated. But definitely, if you just read the entire book or... big chapters of the book, the book is very long in some part and very boring. The idea, there is a clear idea that has to do with what we mean by nature, as you know, the entirety of everything that happens in the universe, in the planet, on our planet and elsewhere, of which we humans are just one piece. So that's very strong in Taoism. It's, I would say, less strong in Indian philosophy. It's really in the East, more of a Chinese emphasis on that. And it resonates a lot with Western naturalism. It's not that it doesn't exist in the West. Of course, it's very strong in the West as well. I mean, that's Democritus. Democritus was a naturalist in that sense, dramatically, right? The world is... vacuum and atoms and that's it. Okay? And this makes the Sun, the planet, the star, the Earth, you, me, our conversation. Careful. He didn't say that. He said the world is vacuum and atoms and the way they attach to one another, the order in which they attach to one another. So it's not just the existence of this, it's the structure that they make, the order that they make. That's profound