The Order of Time
Carlo Rovelli
(2017, p.98)
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The difference between things and events is that things persist in time; events have a limited duration. A stone is a prototypical "thing": we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow.
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Conversely, a kiss is an "event." It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.
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We cannot think of the physical world as if it were made of things, of entities. It simply doesn't work. What works instead is thinking about the world as a network of events.
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Simple events, and more complex events that can be disassembled into combinations of simpler ones. A few examples: war is not a thing, it's a sequence of events. A storm is not a thing, it's a collection of occurrences.
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A cloud above a mountain is not a thing, it is the condensation of humidity in the air that the wind blows over the mountain. A wave is not a thing, it is a movement of water, and the water that forms it is always different.
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A family is not a thing, it is a collection of relations, occurrences, feelings. And a human being? Of course it's not a thing; like the cloud above the mountain, it's a complex process, where food, information, light, words, and so on enter and exit. . .
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A knot of knots in a network of social relations, in a network of chemical processes, in a network of emotions exchanged with its own kind.
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