New Carlo Rovelli book challenges science’s understanding of reality and the universe (Adam Frank, 9/14/26, NPR)
Rovelli dedicates considerable space to a view of quantum mechanics called the relational interpretation. When quantum physics appeared in the early 20th century, it came as a shock to the physicists who were creating it. In the 250 years since Newton introduced his famous laws of motion, physicists had come to believe their equations described a reality that was entirely independent of human action or interpretation. The “stuff” described by Newton’s laws, and the laws themselves existed “out there” in the “Ultimate Reality” that the book on my shelf points to. But in quantum mechanics it became difficult to speak of objects having properties before those properties were measured. This is the source of the famous Schrodinger’s Cat paradox where a cat in a box can be both dead and alive before the box is opened and a measurement is made.
For some physicists, it was so important to get that Ultimate Reality back that they invented interpretations of quantum physics that claimed the universe splits into separate parallel versions of itself when the box is opened. Rovelli thinks these attempts are nonsense. For him, the lesson of quantum mechanics is relationality. Everything exists only in relation to everything else. That means the properties of a system – any object – are always relational properties. There is no way to see them from an ultimate or absolute perspective because there are no ultimate or absolute perspectives. And in the absence of an ultimate perspective the power of physics to ultimately “explain everything” also falls apart.