I have always been fascinated learning about the nature of reality, its elements and their relationships to each other, and about how things work in the word. Naturally, such an interest pulls one into the study of physics. I have always considered physics an esoteric field, understood only by old guys with frizzy white hair shooting out from their scalps, as though having received a massive electric shock. But lately, I have taken to read ‘introductory’ accounts of physics, supposedly written for the ‘common man’. That would be me. So, imagine my excitement when I picked up two of Carlo Rovelli’s books’; Reality is Not What it Seems, and then Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. I was excited to get started and dig into the hearth of physics; determined to go slow, re-read pages as needed, and stubbornly persist with concepts, building one upon another, until I understood them and could ‘see them’ in my mind’s eye.

What a disappointment. I couldn’t even get past special relativity, let alone general relativity or quantum mechanics. Rovelli discusses the history of physics, going back to the Greeks, through Newton and beyond,  and I find it interesting. But then he tries to describe and define ideas like; the world is ultimately granular, not continuous;  Einstein’s ‘extended present’, where absolute simultaneity does not exist, the connection between space and time, the curving of space-time, the probability of electrons and their randomness, the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics, . He finally explains this by saying “Particles are quanta of a field, just as photons are quanta of light. All fields display a granular structure in their interactions”. This is called the Standard Model of elementary particles. OK, now I got it!  “Quantum mechanics”, he offers, ” with its fields/particles, offers today a spectacularly effective description of nature. The world is not made up of fields and particles but of a single type of entity: the quantum field”.

Having finished the 2 books, I now know less than I thought I did about the nature of reality and how things work. I’m tempted to go back to the Buddhist description of the 3 aspects of nature; impermanence, selflessness and suffering. It seems more my speed and makes more sense since I know I am not suffering having pursued my path to physics.

So, my point of all this is; why can’t a really smart physicist write a book about physics that speaks ‘physi-ease’ but then offers common, everyday examples of those physics concepts that I mention above? After all, a definition of a really good teacher is someone who can present difficult ideas and concepts in easily understandable language. I think such a book would make physics more accessible and interesting to a larger pool of people who don’t have white, frizzy hair that had been electro-shocked!