themarginalian.org · 9 hours ago

The Kiln and the Quantum of Relationships – the Marginalian

At the kiln, watching two glazes merge into something wholly unpredictable under extreme heat, Maria Popova finds her way into one of physics' most unsettling revelations: that reality itself is not made of things, but of relationships between them. Drawing on Carlo Rovelli's quantum primer *Helgoland*, she traces how the subatomic world and the human world obey the same strange law - that "properties do not reside in objects, they are bridges between objects." The self, it follows, is not a container we carry through our interactions with others, but something that only comes into being through them - which means who we become in love, in friendship, in conflict, is not less true than who we are alone. There is no view from outside this web; every description of the world, Rovelli insists, is from inside it, which quietly dissolves the illusion that we are ever truly separate from what we behold or whom we love. Popova names what this leaves us with: "the measure of our lives is the light between us."