Carlo Rovelli for On the Equality of All Things: Physics and Philosophy

Carlo Rovelli is coming to Topping & Company Booksellers on Tuesday 22nd September, for a talk on his latest book, On the Equality of All Things: Physics and Philosophy. It's being held at The Citadel (York City Church) on Gillygate, YO31 7EA, rather than in the shop itself.

If you've come across his name before, it's likely from Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, the one that went everywhere. Since then he's put out The Order of Time, Helgoland and White Holes — all number-one bestsellers, translated into more than forty languages. He's often called the 'poet of physics', which is a fair shorthand for the way he writes: he takes these massive, abstract ideas and puts them into plain English without stripping away the wonder. He's a theoretical physicist by trade, and he still runs the quantum gravity research group at the Centre de physique théorique in Marseille, so he's working at the edge of the field while he writes about it.

In On the Equality of All Things, he reaches back to the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi to make his point. His argument is that electrons, minds, stones and galaxies aren't essentially different in nature, and that reality is shaped by a continuous play of reflections. It's the kind of thing that sounds like a riddle until you hear it laid out, and that's exactly why it's worth hearing him talk through it in person rather than just reading it on the page.

The talk is on Tuesday 22nd September, starting at 7pm, with doors open from 6.30pm. It's at The Citadel (York City Church) on Gillygate, YO31 7EA.