Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 1,158 ratings

Price: 11.81

Last update: 01-09-2025


About this item

Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian

“Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator.... This is the place where science comes to life.” (Neil Gaiman)

“One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book.” (John Banville, The Wall Street Journal)

A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time.

One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving.

Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious.

As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness.

Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Jon G. Allen
    5.0 out of 5 stars Lucid and Convincing
    Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2022
    I found one misleading statement in this book: "I am not a philosopher, I am a physicist: a simple mechanic" (p. 157). Not a philosopher by trade, perhaps, but certainly a much needed philosophically minded physicist.

    I am a psychologist with minimal knowledge or knack for physics or math. I write from a position of ignorance. But I have long thought quantum physics to be mysteriously fascinating and, every few years I pick up a book like this one that promises to make it comprehensible. I've read a handful of these books and have developed a bit of familiarity with the subject but nothing that has stuck with me as particularly relevant to the way I think. This book is the exception, because it is philosophical and beautifully written as well as being personal. And it is short.

    All the books I've read, including this one, state that no one understands quantum physics and that the world it implies is "crazy" and "bizarre." But Carlo Rovelli takes the findings on their face and finds the world they imply to be beautiful in contrast to our intuitive materialistic image of "human beings...made only of tiny stones bouncing against each other" (p. 163). At the quantum level, there is no material, no masses in continuous motion--only relatedness. Rovelli's account resonates with my sense that our experience of separateness is an illusion; there can be no self apart from relatedness. Rovelli credits Buddhism with this understanding and gives us references.

    This book calls for more than one reading, and I cannot say I fully grasp it (and perhaps Rovelli would say the same, modest as he is). But this one will stick with me, unlike the others I've tried.

    Spoiler alert, consider the last two sentences, which I hope will tempt you if you're on the fence:

    "The interconnectedness of things, the reflection of one in another, shines with a clear light that the coldness of eighteenth-century mechanism could not capture. Even if it leaves us astonished. Even if it leaves us with a profound sense of mystery" (p. 203).

    I think astonished with a profound sense of mystery is just the right place to be.
  • John
    5.0 out of 5 stars The history and philosophical ramifications of our quantum world, beautifully explored
    Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2021
    What is quantum physics, how was it conceived, and what does it tell us about ourselves? These are the questions Carlo Rovelli attempts to answer with cultural and philosophical depth while remaining clear, concise, and often beautifully poetic.

    He begins by describing quantum theory through the fascinating tale of its birth, which briefly features the stark, “Sacred” island of Helgoland in the North Sea where young Werner Heisenberg first peeked beyond classical mechanics into the “strangely beautiful interior” of reality. Each of the great minds that contributed their inspiration and genius come alive in Rovelli’s retelling, and the basics of quantum mechanics are revealed, though only in their barest form. Rovelli then gives us an intelligible tour of the strange attempts at understanding quantum theory, explaining convincingly why he favors the relational interpretation.

    ”The properties of an object are the way in which it acts upon other objects: reality is this web of interactions. Instead of seeing the physical world as a collection of objects with definite properties, quantum theory invites us to see the physical world as a net of relations. Objects are its nodes.”

    In summary, ours is a granular, probabilistic, and ultimately relative world built not on solid objects but only on a web of interactions made coherent by entanglement—”the intersubjectivity that grounds the objectivity of our communal vision of the world.”

    Rovelli spends the rest of the book grappling with the implications of this transformed vision of the world for our philosophy, our conception of self, and our sense of meaning. To me, this was the best part, especially his comparison of quantum mechanics to the wisdom of Nāgārjuna, a revered 2nd century Indian Buddhist saint and philosopher.

    ”There is no ultimate or mysterious essence to understand—that is the true essence of our being. “I” is nothing other than the vast and interconnected set of phenomena that constitute it, each one dependent on something else.”

    I noticed many parallels in Rovelli’s descriptions to those of complex systems theory, nondualist philosophy, and, more subtly, to monistic idealism, despite Rovelli’s obvious aversion to idealism in general. His approach effectively negates mind/body dualism as well as metaphysical absolutes while avoiding a complete spiral into the abyss of nihilism. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone with an open mind willing to rebuild reality from the ground up. I will leave you with a few highlights:

    ”To understand that we do not exist as autonomous entities helps us free ourselves from attachments and suffering.”

    ”Precisely because of its impermanence, because of the absence of any absolute, the now has meaning and is precious.”

    ”We are nothing but images of images. Reality, including our selves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which… there is nothing.”

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