Cambridge University Press quotes

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QM is not the theory of micro-objects. It is our best form of mechanics.

— Carlo Rovelli (2001)

Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale: Contemporary Theories in Quantum Gravity
p. 104


Einstein’s major discovery is that spacetime and gravitational field are the same object.

— Carlo Rovelli (2004)

Quantum Gravity
p. 367


[In the Loop Quantum Gravity picture] these “quanta of gravity” do not live immersed in a spacetime. They are space. The idea of space as the inert “container” of the physical world has disappeared.

— Carlo Rovelli (2004)

Quantum Gravity
p. 368


Fundamental physics is today in a peculiar phase of deep conceptual confusion.

— Carlo Rovelli (2009)

Approaches to Quantum Gravity: Toward a New Understanding of Space, Time and Matter
p. 4


The key difficulty of quantum gravity may therefore be to find a way to understand the physical world in the absence of the familiar stage of space and time.

— Carlo Rovelli (2009)

Approaches to Quantum Gravity: Toward a New Understanding of Space, Time and Matter
p. 7


The world may not be the way it appears in the tiny garden of our daily experience.

— Carlo Rovelli (2009)

Approaches to Quantum Gravity: Toward a New Understanding of Space, Time and Matter
p. 4


The search for a quantum theory of gravity raises once more old questions such as: What is space? What is time? What is the meaning of “moving”?

— Carlo Rovelli (2010)

Approaches to Quantum Gravity: Toward a New Understanding of Space, Time and Matter
p. 8


There are no facts, only interpretations.

— Friedrich Nietzsche (1887)

Writings from the Late Notebooks
p. 139


[T[he quantum theoretic description of physical reality is exquisitely strange and profoundly mysterious.

— David Mermin (1990)

Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age
p. 111