Essays on sundry matters

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, essays

Carlo Rovelli is well known as a leading theoretical physicist. As such, he is often solicited to write essays for many publications. Being someone of a great many interests, those essays are, as we say, all over the map (perhaps in school he, like me, wanted to major in everything). His new book is titled There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important Than Kindness: And Other Thoughts of Physics, Philosophy and the World.

As good writers must do, he is eager to reveal himself to us. This plunges deepest in his essay/chapter "Why I am an Atheist." I prefer to not comment on it, beyond saying I think an honest scientist must be instead an Agnostic, taking the stance, "I don't know" about deity.

He also reveals bits here and there about others, such as Roger Penrose in a chapter by that name, Stephen Hawking in "Thank You, Stephen", Charles Darwin in a chapter by that name, and even Adolph Hitler in "Mein Kampf". In that last essay, he uncovers the motivation behind fascism: fear. He ascribes fear exclusively to right wing political extremism, when in reality, it is behind every extremism along all axes, not only "right" and "left".

He deals with so many subjects that I'll leave it to readers to discover the breadth of them. I expect you'll enjoy it.

Note: the image above is from the video essay "Personal Identity" at Philosophy Monkey. I hope the Flash video gets replaced; it is no longer playable.

Also a heads up: the current book I'm reading is upwards of 400 pages, so unless I get extra time to read it, it'll be a while before I post again.