A collection of essays that showcases the author’s quite breathtaking range of interests and erudition, beautifully written – perhaps especially the last essay on the outbreak of covid-19 in Italy. Although I think my favourite is the essay “Ideas don’t fall from the sky,” where an early-career Rovelli is given unexpected advice from a Nobel prize-winner, that hard work and an immersion in contemporary ideas and their origins is more important that raw talent in achieving success. Spotting contradictions or gaps in the corpus of work in an area often shows where there is new knowledge to be found, and this requires one to be an expert, not necessarily to have superior insights. It’s a gratifyingly modest view of science.

4/5. Finished Tuesday 19 October, 2021.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)