Often heavy going, but a thoughtful argument that “all nature is quantum” and that we should go with the flow.
The theoretical physicist and bestselling author digs into his discipline’s most confounding concept.
As lucidly as he can, Rovelli shows that while quantum theory may clarify the foundations of science, it doesn’t make sense. “Its mathematics does not describe reality,” he writes. “Distant objects seem magically connected. Matter is replaced by ghostly waves of probability.” And yet, it “has never been found wrong.” The author begins with the easy part: the history. Helgoland is a barren island in the North Sea where, in 1925, a young Werner Heisenberg spent the summer trying to explain how electrons behave. The 20-year-old explanation that atoms consisted of tiny electrons whirling around heavier protons—as planets orbit the sun—didn’t work. Electrons don’t whirl like specks of matter but rather in diffuse, cloudlike waves. However, whenever scientists deal with an electron (such as in a particle accelerator), it becomes a speck of matter. After much agonizing, Heisenberg decided not to explain electron behavior but simply describe what happens. The result was a brilliant, if clunky, formulation using mathematical matrixes that correctly predicted what experiments showed. Within a few years, other geniuses (Schrödinger, Pauli, Dirac, Born) refined and simplified Heisenberg’s work, and quantum theory was off and running. After 100 years, scientists still agree that quantum theory remains an enigma, but it works so well that only a persistent minority, Rovelli included, try to make sense of it. In the book’s second half, more philosophy than science, the author maintains that every entity in the universe, from protons to humans, exists only in relation to other objects. Something that didn’t interact would be invisible. Expressing doubt over Ernst Mach’s insistence that science must be based on the “observable,” Rovelli leans toward the Buddhist teaching that “there is nothing that exists in itself, independently from something else.”
Often heavy going, but a thoughtful argument that “all nature is quantum” and that we should go with the flow.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-32888-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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