2023-11-03 21:40:48
by PAOLO CONTI
Released on Tuesday 7 November by Solferino I knew it, here, above the Hao river, a collection of articles written in recent years by the famous physicist. A journey against laziness and hypocrisy: changing perspective is his invitation. Starting from a Chinese dialogue
The dialogue on the possible but not scientifically provable happiness of fish, in this case busy swimming in the Chinese Hao river, strikes a great contemporary physicist like Carlo Rovelli, specialized in Theoretical Physics, long-time collaborator of Corriere della Sera, author of very successful essays like Sette short physics lessons, The order of time, Heligoland, White holes (all Adelphi). That comparison on fish, explains Rovelli, bears the signature of Master Zhuang, a central figure in the philosophy of Taoism, who lived in the 4th century before the modern era, author of the Zhuangzi, which Rovelli defines as an unequal collection of writings and sayings. A sort of Leopardian Zibaldone, in short. It is worth reporting the brilliant dialogue in its entirety to understand where the whole story is going: Zhuangzi and Hui Shi were walking on the bridge over the Hao River. Zhuangzi observed: “Those little fishes that wander around calmly and without haste are happy fish!”. To which, Hui Shi objected: “You are not a fish; How do you know how a fish is doing?”. Zhuangzi replied: “You are not me, how do you know what I know about how a fish is?”. But Hui Shi insisted: “I’m not you, obviously I don’t know about you; but you are not a fish and that is enough to deduce that you don’t know what a fish likes.” But Zhuangzi concluded: “Let’s go back to square one. When you said “how do you know how a fish is doing?”, you knew I knew. I knew it, here, above the Hao River.”
Rovelli rereads everything in the second decade of the third millennium of the modern era, citing the essay What does it feel like to be a bat? by the American philosopher and professor at New York University Thomas Nagel (text published in 1974, which appeared much later in Italy by Castelvecchi) and explains why that comparison struck him so much. All thanks to Zhuangzi’s last sentence which, Rovelli argues, demolishes the question of the impossibility of knowing other minds and brings everything back into the context of common discourse. Knowledge is not something outside nature: it is itself part of the natural world… the sharpest objection to any form of dualism I have ever encountered. And together with the entire formulation of the problem of knowledge in terms of a radical distinction between subject and object. Formulated more than two millennia ago. This is why Rovelli decided to dedicate the title (I knew it, here, above the Hao river) to Zhuangzi of this collection of 38 of his interventions and articles for newspapers, mostly appearing in the Corriere della Sera, published on Tuesday 7th from Solferino publisher. The inevitable cage of the journalistic form, following the various interventions on the most varied topics (here is the Zibaldone again, and therefore the Zhuangzi again, the article in question published in the Corriere on 24 October 2021) positively forces Rovelli to synthesis and patience informative (never pedagogical, fortunately). In short, it is clear that the texts (put together in the volume without chronological criteria, perhaps in homage to the underlying theme of Rovellian research) follow a single law: the author’s curiosity, his desire to reflect on a starting point or on current affairs that it unites us all.
Rovelli accepts the challenge and reveals that anticipatory ability that only some intellectuals manage to have. We are at the end of May 2020, in the heart of the Covid emergency, the vaccine has not yet been found. The title of the speech We can only be saved together. Rovelli wrote in those days: The first country to develop the vaccine will want to keep it for itself. Someone has already proposed doing so. The breakdown of economic interdependence, which is talked about in various parts of the world, opens the door to growing conflicts, war and widespread poverty. To throw millions of human beings who have emerged from it in recent decades into poverty. The Rovelli of 2023 adds in a note: This rupture, or, as they say now, decoupling, is unfortunately exactly what is happening now. The physicist often leaves room for observations that bring us back to the most pragmatic reality, sometimes optimistically. In a comparison on the US/Italy economic gap, after having made (to put it ironically, since he is a great physicist) the necessary calculations, he writes: Even independently of these profound social differences, for the majority of citizens it is economically more convenient to be in a political-social system like the Italian one than in one like the American one. With all the Italian disasters, we live in a country where the majority of the population is economically almost one and a half times better off than the majority of the population of the most powerful country in the world. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to remember it sometimes.
The praise of Italy is also found when Rovelli (October 2021) applauds Giorgio Parisi for the Nobel Prize for Physics: Parisi’s physics is characterized by that ability to move between different fields which is the mark of a great scientist; but also an expression of the best aspect of Italian culture: the ability to look at problems from above, with foresight, beyond specializations, and anticipate the great directions of research that may prove fertile. The definition can also work for humanistic speculation, and who knows if Rovelli really meant this when speaking about Physics and thus overcoming that contrast between classical culture and scientific culture which, for example, another great intellectual such as the archaeologist Andrea has been complaining about for years. Carandini. Poignant and sincere, not at all formal, the farewell at the end of July 2021 to Roberto Calasso, publisher of Rovelli’s works: We will miss you, Roberto. The world needs people like you. Courageous, against the grain, full of intelligence, curiosity, questions to which they have no answer, who know how to open new spaces for thought: organizing reality to give space for thought to grow and spread. Thanks Roberto. You changed my life and so many of us. It is not so obvious that a successful scientist admits that a stranger to his field of research has changed his life.
The approach returns in the confession on his The Order of Time (my most intimate, existential book, the one I passed off as scientific dissemination on relativity, thermodynamics and quantum space but rather my stammering on the meaning of life and the awareness of ‘impermanence) when he recounted last August, shortly before the Venice Film Festival, how director Liliana Cavani (one of my guiding myths) based the film on it and then presented it out of competition. In short, the anthological collection brings out the common thread that holds everything together: even Rovelli, he himself admits, sometimes stutters about the meaning of life exactly as happens to all of us. that benefit of the doubt (I know I don’t know) typical of those who really know. And help the rest of us understand.
November 3, 2023 (modified November 3, 2023 | 8:33 pm)
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