Helgoland by Rovelli, Erica (story read aloud txt) 📕

192–95

Braque, Georges, 67

Brentano, Franz, 166, 174

Broglie, Louis de, 21, 33, 37, 60

Bruckner, Časlav, xi, 201

Buddhism, 150, 153–54

C

Candiotto, Laura, 143, 144

central limit theorem, 215n79

Chalmers, David, 180–81, 185, 190

Churchill, Winston, 16

consciousness, 180–81, 184, 185, 189–90, 195

contextuality, 141, 147–48

Copenhagen, 5–6, 16

Copernicus, 68, 73

correlation, 90–92, 96–99, 102, 168, 171–74, 177–79

Cubism, 67

cybernetics, 132–33

D

Dante Alighieri, 71

Darwin, Charles, 73, 167–73

Democritus, 187

Dirac, Paul, 14, 15–16, 32, 37, 41, 46, 107, 207n6

DNA, 171

Dorato, Mauro, 143

dualism, 141, 183–84, 189

E

Einstein, Albert: debate with Bohr, 54, 135, 138–39; debt to Mach, 118, 128; and determinism, 29; and entanglement, 91; “God does not play dice,” 28–29, 135; and gravity field, 72; on Heisenberg’s ideas, 15; on photoelectric effect, 209n30; and photons, 32–33; and quantum theory, xiii, xv, 33, 138–39; radicalism of, 7, 131; receives Nobel Prize (1921), 37; relativity, 83; and Schopenhauer, 22

electromagnetic waves, 31, 34, 72

Empedocles, 169–70, 220n122

empiriocriticism, 118

emptiness, 151, 154

Engels, Friedrich, 123, 124, 129

entanglement, 89–100, 213n66, 217n100

Everett III, Hugh, 212n57

evolution, 168–73, 175

F

Faraday, Michael, 72

Feynman, Richard, xiii, 52

Freud, Sigmund, 67

G

Galileo Galilei, 10

Gerlach, Walter, 34

Ghirardi, Giancarlo, 211n48

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 4, 202

Göttingen, 6, 10, 16

granularity, 31, 33–35, 105, 109–10

gravity, 72

group theory, 41–42

H

Hamilton’s function, 211n50

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 58

Heisenberg, Werner: Bohr’s influence on, 5–10, 138; on Helgoland, xii, xiv, 6–8, 202; meets Bohr, in occupied Denmark, 16; and “observables,” 8–9, 18–19, 29–30, 33, 38, 121; quantum theory of, 8–16, 45–46, 77, 79, 128, 129; receives Nobel Prize (1932), 37; on wave mechanics, 24–25

Heisenberg matrix, 8–19, 13, 35, 107

Heisenberg’s principle, 104–8, 215n75

Helgoland/Heligoland, xii, xiv, 4, 110–11, 202

Heraclitus, 144

“Hidden Variables” theory, 60–64, 87

Hiroshima, 16–17

Hitler, Adolf, 16

Hume, David, 121, 155

I

idealism, 125, 126, 183–84

indeterminacy, 65–69, 87

information, 100–10, 167–79

intentionality, 166, 176, 179

interactions, 75–79, 84

interference. See quantum interference

Ismael, Jenann, 182

J

Jordan, Pascual, 11–12, 38, 138

Joyce, James, Ulysses, 4

knowledge, 123–24

L

Lenin, Vladimir, 117, 124–30, 133, 141

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 67

linear algebra, 24

Livet, Pierre, 143

Locke, John, 121

logical positivism, 119

M

Mach, Ernst, 7–8, 118–28, 131, 135, 149, 185

“Many Worlds” theory, 56–59, 87n, 182

Marx/Marxism, 120, 123, 124, 129, 131

materialism, 118, 125–27, 183, 184

matrices, 12–14, 13–15, 18, 35, 106–7

matrix mechanics, 24, 25, 27–28

Maxwell, James Clerk, 72

meaning, 166–67, 173–75, 176

metaphysics, 120, 122, 152–53

Micius (satellite), 90

Murnau, F. W., 37

Musil, Robert, 119

N

Nāgārjuna (Buddhist philosopher), 148–58

Nagasaki, 16–17

Nagel, Thomas, 182, 190n

natural selection, 170, 200

neuroscience, 181, 192–93

nirvana, 153–54

Nobel Prizes, 37–38

noncommutative algebra, 107

noncummutavity, 105–8

Nosferatu (film, 1922), 37

O

observables, 8–9, 18–19, 29–30, 33, 38, 120, 121

organization, 132

P

Pauli, Wolfgang, 6, 7, 11, 14, 15–16, 18–19, 37–38, 119

PCM (Projective Consciousness Model), 195

Penrose, Roger, 211n48

Pezzano, Giacomo, 144

phenomenal realism, 149

philosophy, 142–58

photoelectric effect, 33, 34, 209n30

photons, 32–33, 34, 46–52, 61–62, 74, 76–77, 86, 90–92, 105, 107–8, 209n30

physical collapse, of the wave function, 64–65, 211n48

Picasso, Pablo, 67

Pirandello, Luigi, One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, 67

Planck’s constant, 31–35, 104, 106–7

Plato, 144–45

Pris, François-Igor, 143

probability, 27–30, 33, 57, 106

Ptolemy, 68

Q

QBism, 65–69, 87–88

q-numbers, 107, 208n12

qualia, 184

quanta of light, 32–33

quanta of space, 34

quantum decoherence, 210n39, 215n77

quantum gravity, 35

quantum interference, 46–52, 53, 61, 80, 109

quantum leap, 5–10, 14

quantum mechanics, 81n, 139–40

quantum phenomena, 27, 35, 45, 52, 89, 107–8, 139–41, 161–63

quantum physics, 26–28, 33, 62, 92, 103, 141, 176, 182–83

quantum superposition, 45–46, 49–51, 52–53, 80–81, 95–96, 98, 109

quantum theory: applications of, 17–18; equation, 35–37, 106, 108–9; and granularity, 35; Heisenberg’s principle, 104–8; and the mind, 197; and mind/consciousness, 159–65, 180–81, 191; and philosophy, 135–38; relational interpretation, 74–81, 83, 87–88; significance of, xii–xiv

Quine, Willard, 137

R

reality, xiv, xvi, 67–68, 72–73, 78–81, 143–44, 188, 199, 200

Reichenbach, Hans, 22

relations/relational interpretation, 74–81, 87–88, 94–97, 99–100, 128, 142–49, 189–90

relative information, 102n, 168, 171–79, 214n68

relativity, 63, 82–83, 96, 128

relevant information, 103–4, 173–75

Rimini, Alberto, 211n48

Robinson, Kim Stanley, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, 134

Russell, Bertrand, 123

Russian Revolution, 118–19, 129–30

S

samsara, 153–54

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 22

Schrödinger, Erwin, and wave function, 20–29, 33, 37, 49, 57, 60, 69, 86–87

Schrödinger’s cat, 52–53, 54, 57–58, 61, 64–65, 80–81, 98

sensations, 121–22, 123

Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, 197–98

Shannon, Claude, 167–68, 173, 214n68

speed, relativity of, 82

Spinoza, Baruch, 29

Stalin, Josef, 132

Stern, Otto, 34

structural realism, 132, 143, 144, 153

Stürgkh, Karl von, 120

subjectivity, 184

superposition. See quantum superposition

system theory, 132–33

T

Taine, Hippolyte, 195–96

tetralemma, 153n

U

uncertainty principle, 104–8

V

van Fraassen, Bas, 142

Vedanta Hinduism, 22

Vienna Circle, 119

visual system, 192–95

von Neumann, John, 37

W

wave function (Ψ), 23–28, 33, 49, 51, 52–53, 57–66, 83, 87n, 208n18, 211n48, 213n64

wave mechanics, 21–26, 33, 69

Weber, Tullio, 211n48

Western philosophy, 142–45, 148, 153, 155

Wiener, Norbert, 132–33

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 155

Wu Ming, Proletkult, 134

Y

Yin, Juan, 90

Z

Zeilinger, Anton, 45–46, 61, 76, 97, 107

Zeitschrift für Physik (journal), 11

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

About the Author

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He has worked in Italy and the United States, and is currently directing the Quantum Gravity research group of the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, France. His books Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, and The Order of Time are international bestsellers that have been translated into more than forty languages.

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* XP – PX = iħ

*In the original version, the bottle contains not a sleeping gas but poison, and the cat did not fall asleep: it died. I prefer not to play around with the death of a cat.

*The problem of quantum mechanics is the apparent contradiction between two laws of the theory: one describes what happens in a “measurement,” and the other in the “unitary” evolution, namely when there is no measurement. The relational interpretation is the idea that both are correct: the first regards the events relative to the systems in interaction, the second regards the events relative to other systems.

*This is the central technical feature of the relational interpretation. The probability of events realized with respect