Of late, the abuse of the Q-word in new age market and corporate gurudom made many scholars stay muted in exploring and using the parallels between Eastern philosophical traditions and the view of reality brought forth by Quantum Mechanics.

In this context, theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli's latest book comes across as a gush of fresh air.

Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution.

Carlo Rovelli.

It has fundamentally changed the way we view reality.

Einstein by Lincoln Barnett in 1948 to The God Equation of Michio Kaku in 2021, the need to communicate the exotic reality which the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics have unveiled, has spawned the best in the genre of popular science writing.

In the same way, Quantum Mechanics (QM) has also triggered some intense philosophical debates.

The abuse of the Q-word in the new age market and corporate gurudom has actually made many scholars stay muted in exploring and using the parallels between Eastern philosophical traditions and the view of reality brought forth by QM.

In this context, Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution, written by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, comes across as a gush of fresh air.

Helgoland is the small island where in 1925, the 23-year-old Heisenberg worked out what would be one of foundations of the quantum revolution.

Right from the beginning, Rovelli makes a sense of awe grip the reader:.

This resonates with the fabled Indra’s Net in a way – popularised in the context of modern science, though in a different-yet-related domain, by Douglas Hofstadter in his ever-green classic Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979).

Here, Rovelli presents a view that is quite fascinating.

It is struck with either glorification of the past or with patronizingly cultivating ‘scientific temperament.’ Both alienate the general population from modern science.