内容来源：https://www.quantamagazine.org/carlo-rovellis-radical-perspective-on-reality-20251029/

内容总结：

意大利理论物理学家卡洛·罗韦利近日在接受专访时，以独特的视角阐述了他对现实本质的颠覆性认知。这位以《七堂极简物理课》蜚声国际的科学家提出：所谓客观现实或许并不存在，宇宙本质是由不同观察视角构成的关系网络。

现年69岁的罗韦利现任教于法国艾克斯-马赛大学，其学术生涯始终贯穿着对传统认知方式的挑战。早在1980年代，他就参与提出"圈量子引力论"，该理论认为空间由基本量子环构成，时空概念源于这些量子环的相互作用与演化。1990年代，他进一步提出"关系性量子力学"，主张所有物体属性都只能在与其他系统的关系中定义。

"我们习惯的时空观可能只是错觉。"罗韦利解释，"就像鸽子需要通过头部运动来感知距离，人类对时间的线性感受也可能源于热力学第二定律的局限视角。"这位曾参与1977年波伦亚学生运动的物理学家坦言，自己始终保持着"老派嬉皮士"的反叛精神，这种特质促使他不断突破物理学的传统思维框架。

针对学界对圈量子引力论"违背爱因斯坦预言"的质疑，罗韦利回应称最新理论版本已与光速恒定原理相容。他透露目前正在探索通过宇宙微波背景辐射或微型黑洞来验证该理论，这些重量仅约10微克的"暗物质候选者"可能正漂浮在我们周围。

在哲学与物理学的交叉领域，罗韦利特别强调跨学科对话的重要性。他批评霍金"哲学已死"的论断过于狭隘，指出从康德到佛教龙树菩萨的思想传统始终滋养着科学创新。"科学家若拒绝哲学，就会困在固有的思维牢笼中。"这位物理学家强调，"我们需要通过哲学来提出正确的问题，而不仅是寻找既定问题的答案。"

随着新作《量子力学的关系性解释》意大利文版问世，罗韦利将继续推动这场关于现实本质的思辨。在他看来，承认认知的局限性恰是科学进步的动力——在绝对确定与全然无知之间，正存在着人类探索世界的广阔空间。

中文翻译：

卡洛·罗韦利对现实的颠覆性认知
序章
在法国里维埃拉一座天主教堂外，卡洛·罗韦利模仿着路过的鸽子前后伸缩脖颈。他告诉我，鸽子点头不仅是为了稳定视线，更是为了测算物体距离——这是对它们双眼视觉局限的补偿。"这完全是视角问题，"他说。
这位艾克斯-马赛大学的理论物理学家致力于研究人类如何从有限视角认知现实。他的研究横跨量子信息与黑洞等多个领域，常深入科学史与科学哲学的交叉地带。1980年代末，他参与创立的"圈量子引力理论"试图阐释时空的量子基础。十年后，他提出量子力学的新"关系性"诠释，甚至激进地指出根本不存在客观现实，唯有基于物理学家或鸽子等不同观察角度的认知。
近年来，他更以科普畅销书作家身份广受认可。《七堂极简物理课》全球销量逾200万册，将他推向仍在适应的聚光灯下。"我实在不擅长应付名气，"他坦言，"总会惹上麻烦。"（在我拜访期间，他正忙于回应意大利物理学会会长的指责，对方控诉他污蔑恩里科·费米是"嗜血的法西斯/纳粹分子"。）
罗韦利的物理学观深受其反叛的青年时代影响。1977年博洛尼亚政治革命浪潮中，他曾参与学生抗议，供职于颠覆性左翼电台，起草非法宣言，后因拒绝义务兵役遭拘留。对社会规范的幻灭让他"深感我们对现实世界的认知充满困惑"。如今69岁的他仍保持政治参与（且时常愤慨）："我骨子里仍是个老嬉皮。"
当博洛尼亚的政治动荡逐渐平息，罗韦利将深层疑虑转向现实本质。他以挑战传统思维的惯性直面物理学基础难题——并非否定既有理论，而是以全新视角重新审视。这种方法论的核心在于彻底开放地摒弃对世界运行机制的直觉认知。
为直面物理与社会领域的偏见，罗韦利求助于哲学。他常发表形而上学论著，倡导跨学科对话。本月意大利语新作深入探讨物理与哲学的交汇，这种融合被他视为理解现有理论真谛的关键。
量子杂志在罗韦利位于卡西斯悬崖边的家中进行了专访。12小时的对话在露台闲坐、小镇漫步与百年帆船航行中展开，话题涵盖宗教、战争、意识、媒体、爱情、鸽子，当然还有物理学。以下为精简编辑后的对话。
您研究的核心问题如何引导您探索量子引力？
核心问题始终是：世界如何运作？广义相对论与量子力学这两大理论在不同领域表现卓越。我求学时就被它们颠覆常识的特质震撼——它们共同挑战了空间作为容器、时间线性流逝的固有认知，与我'欲解现实需彻底革新'的理念共鸣。
所有证伪这两大理论的尝试均告失败，但现有图景仍存在明显裂痕。诸如物体坠入黑洞等现象就超出两者解释范畴。当试图融合理论时，矛盾与悖论层出不穷。于我而言，量子引力问题正是我们认知世界基本物理图景中的深邃鸿沟。
请谈谈您填补鸿沟的方法：圈量子引力理论。
这是路径保守却结论激进的理论。我们严格遵循广义相对论与量子力学的教导，追溯其逻辑终点——不引入额外场、新粒子，不修改爱因斯坦方程或添加自然假说，只是努力协调既有知识。
该理论指出空间并非无限可分，而是由相互联结的时空基本单元构成。这套简洁方程不含时空变量，时空概念源于引力量子相互作用与转化的涌现。所谓空间是这些圈的数量呈现，所谓时间则是圈结构的持续演化。
若时间非本质存在，如何解释我们日常的时间体验？
时间流逝的体验是热力学第二定律的产物——即物理系统趋向无序（熵增）的特性。但这仅是源于人类视角的表象。我们恰巧是与某些宏观变量绑定的存在，熵在这些变量参照下呈现单向流动。
我的直觉是：时间洪流或许如同每日天穹旋转，是宏伟浩瀚却本质虚幻的现象。这是对热力学第二定律的完全视角化理解——其真实性与旋转的天空相同，仅相对于我们而存在。
有批评指出圈量子引力理论与爱因斯坦的光速恒定预言相悖，您如何看待？
该理论历经20年演进，现有版本已与爱因斯坦预言兼容——光速在所有物理波长确保持恒定。但仍有待解难题：理论不同版本的等价性尚未明确，粒子散射似乎会产生无限低能辐射，方程求解仍极其复杂。
主要缺陷在于缺乏实验支持，但曙光已现。有提议用该理论解读宇宙微波背景辐射中的大爆炸遗迹，另一个令我振奋的新设想是：若理论成立，应存在重约10微克、仅受引力作用的长寿命微型黑洞。我们正探索探测这些粒子"背景风"的方法，或许它们正是所谓的暗物质。
探测虽难但非绝无可能。我期待未来实验能让学界将圈量子引力视为自然解释。现有理论百年来的成功未必不能解释所有这些现象。
若坚持现有理论，它们共同描绘了怎样的现实图景？
对时空的重新思考促使我将现实视为相互作用的网络，而非具有确定属性的物体集合——这就是量子力学的"关系性"诠释。从某种意义上说，这是现代物理学从广义相对论到量子力学延续的视角主义趋势。
我们习惯速度的相对性：这张桌子的速度相对于我、窗外飞鸽或太阳皆不同。爱因斯坦揭示时间与长度也具有相对性。关系性量子力学更进一步，主张物体的颜色、位置、尺寸等所有属性原则上都只能相对于其他系统定义。必须放弃"从外部描述物质实体"的观念，依照现代科学，概念化现实的最佳方式应是自然片段彼此间的相对信息。
我们只能陈述世界在自身有限偏见视角中的样貌。这彻底颠覆了"世界事物及其状态可被完整列举"的认知，我们必须接受这种对现实完整描述的缺失。
这种论点令人不安，它似乎动摇了物理学描述现实"真实"本质的终极目标？
确实如此。但纵观科学史，终极目标始终在演变：从天体运行轨迹到粒子间作用力，再到时空场演化。科学的核心在于寻找最佳概念框架来理解所见自然。关系性视角根植于这样的深刻认知：我们对世界的理解本质有限，所见皆为局部。摒弃"终极真理"的迷思，我们能以更强大诚实的方式接近现实。切不可将既有知识与现实本质混为一谈。
若由此产生现实虚无感，这很正常。但正是意识到认知的局限，我们才得以学习。在绝对确定与全然无知之间，正是我们栖居的精彩空间。
您曾提及哲学如何指引世界观转变，如何看待物理与哲学的关系？
二者亟需彼此。漠视科学的哲学家拒绝接触现有知识，实属愚昧；排斥哲学的科学家则困于可突破的思维牢笼。史上物理学家与哲学家联系紧密：哥白尼、伽利略、牛顿本身皆是哲人；爱因斯坦明确承认受康德、马赫等哲学家启发；薛定谔创立波动力学时很可能受到《奥义书》影响。
但近来这种关系降至冰点。霍金宣称"哲学已死"，费曼讥讽"哲学家对科学的作用如同鸟类学家对鸟类"。他们未意识到：首先，其评论科学本质的言行本身就是哲学实践；其次，他们的科学观已深受美国实用主义及波普尔、库恩等哲学家影响。物理学界从这些哲人处汲取的精华是：科学在于凭空构想新观点，建立理论并检验正误。这造成错误印象，仿佛科学进步仅来自颠覆旧思维的范式革命，所有新假说在证伪前概率相等。但科学远不止于此——它是基于既有知识持续完善认知的过程。
我认为这种封闭心态正是现代理论物理的症结。知识体系的剧烈跃迁迫使我们重新思考现实、信息、时空等概念，学界却在空想概念上耗费过多时间。我们更需要消化既有知识，而这就需要哲学。哲学家的作用不在于提供标准答案，而在于帮助我们构建认知现实的正确问题。
您在《赫尔戈兰》中提到佛教哲学家龙树如何启发研究，他的思想如何开启您的思路？
关系性量子力学核心在于：当我们谈论原子、人类或星系等任何对象时，所指从来不是孤立系统，而是该系统与他物的相互作用。我们只能通过物体与自身或测量设备的关联来进行描述与理解。
龙树表达了相似观点：万物皆无独立自性，依存关系方为存在本质。放弃"本源实体"或"终极绝对现实"的执念，我们能通过万物相互显现的方式更好地理解世界。
关系性量子力学运用类似思路，以精确数学方法化解所有量子悖论。关键在于放弃"事物绝对真实状态"的追问，正如伽利略教导"物体是否真在运动"毫无意义，爱因斯坦揭示"两事件是否真正同时"纯属虚妄。我认为量子力学的困惑正源于提出无意义问题，谜题的答案就在于谜题本身并不成立。

英文来源：

Carlo Rovelli’s Radical Perspective on Reality
Introduction
Sitting outside a Catholic church on the French Riviera, Carlo Rovelli jutted his head forward and backward, imitating a pigeon trotting by. Pigeons bob their heads, he told me, not only to stabilize their vision but also to gauge distances to objects — compensating for their limited binocular vision. “It’s all perspectival,” he said.
A theoretical physicist affiliated with Aix-Marseille University, Rovelli studies how we perceive reality from our limited vantage point. His research is wide-ranging, running the gamut from quantum information to black holes, and often delves into the history and philosophy of science. In the late 1980s, he helped develop a theory called loop quantum gravity that aims to describe the quantum underpinnings of space and time. A decade later, he proposed a new “relational” interpretation of quantum mechanics, which goes so far as to suggest that there is no objective reality whatsoever, only perspectives on reality — be they a physicist’s or a pigeon’s.
More recently, he’s gained recognition as a best-selling author of popular science books, including Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, which has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide — placing him in a limelight he’s still adjusting to. “I’m very bad at being somewhat famous,” he said. “I’m always getting myself in trouble.” (During my visit, he was fending off criticism from the president of the Italian Physical Society, who accused him of defaming Enrico Fermi as a “bloodthirsty fascist/Nazi.”)
Rovelli’s own perspective on physics is heavily influenced by his rebellious, countercultural youth. A student protestor in an attempted political revolution in Bologna in 1977, Rovelli worked at a subversive left-wing radio station, drafted an illegal manifesto, and was later detained for refusing compulsory military service. Disillusioned by societal norms, “I had a sense that we were confused about how to think about reality around us,” he said. At 69, he remains politically engaged (and often enraged). “Part of me is still an old hippie.”
After the political unrest in Bologna petered out, Rovelli transferred his deep misgivings to the very fabric of reality. He used the same proclivity for challenging traditional ways of thinking to confront long-standing problems in the foundations of physics — not by rejecting established theories, but by embracing a new perspective on them. His approach centers around a radical openness to abandoning intuitions about how the world works.
To confront his own biases, whether about physics or society, Rovelli turns to philosophy. He often publishes on metaphysical topics and advocates for more dialogue between the disciplines. His newest book, published this month in Italian, is a deep dive into the intersection of philosophy and physics, a mash-up he sees as the key to understanding what our existing theories are really telling us.
Quanta visited Rovelli at his home overlooking the cliffs of Cassis. Over a 12-hour conversation, held while we lounged on his patio, strolled around town, and cruised on his 100-year-old sailboat, we discussed religion, war, consciousness, media, love, pigeons and, of course, physics. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What is your central question, and how did it lead you to study quantum gravity?
My central question has always been: How does the world work? We have two main theories that work incredibly well for different domains: general relativity and quantum mechanics. When I learned about these theories in school, I was impressed by how radical they were. They both challenge very foundational conceptions that we have about the world around us — of space as an empty stage where objects exist, and of time as a steady linear flow. They resonated with this idea I had that if you really want to understand reality, you have to be ready to be radical.
All attempts to disprove quantum mechanics and general relativity have failed. But nevertheless, in this picture, there’s clearly a crack. There are phenomena out there — like objects falling into a black hole — that fall outside the domain of both theories. When you try to put the two theories together, they appear to result in all sorts of contradictions and paradoxes. To me, the interface of these two theories — the problem of quantum gravity — was really this deep, profound gap in our fundamental physical picture of the world.
Tell me about the approach you’ve taken to fill that gap: loop quantum gravity.
Loop quantum gravity is a very conservative approach with a very radical consequence. It’s an attempt to say: Let’s take seriously what we’ve learned from general relativity and quantum mechanics all the way through and see where they lead us. There are no extra fields, extra particles, modifications of the Einstein equations, or other hypotheses about nature. It’s just an effort to make coherent what we know so far.
Basically, loop quantum gravity implies that space is not infinitely divisible — it’s made of elementary chunks, which are linked together into loops. The theory is a very simple set of equations, but there’s no time variables and no space variables. Those concepts emerge from the way these quanta of gravity interact and transform. What we call space is the quantity of these loops, and what we call time is how the loops evolve continuously.
How do we account for our common experience of time if it’s not fundamental?
Our experience of time flowing forward is a product of the second law of thermodynamics — the tendency for physical systems to increase in disorder, or what we call entropy. But this only appears fundamental from our perspective. We happen to be beings that are connected to certain macroscopic variables with respect to which entropy is globally moving in one direction.
My intuition is that the overall flow of time really could be like the rotation of the sky every day. It’s a majestic, immense phenomenon, but it’s actually an illusion. This is a totally perspectival understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. It’s real in the same sense that the rotating sky is real, but it’s real only with respect to us.
One critique of loop quantum gravity is that it contradicts certain predictions of Einstein, namely that the speed of light is constant for all wavelengths. What do you make of this critique?
The theory has evolved a lot over the last 20 years, and the current version is not incompatible with Einstein’s predictions — the speed of light is indeed constant at all physical wavelengths. That said, there are some things about loop quantum gravity that still need resolving. We’re not sure how the different versions of the theory are equivalent to one another. We have a problem in which particle scattering seems to generate infinite amounts of low-energy radiation. And solving the equations is still a very complicated task that we’re working to simplify.
The main shortcoming is the lack of experiments supporting it. However, there’s hope on the horizon. There are some proposals to use loop quantum gravity to make sense of signatures in the cosmic microwave background radiation that’s left over from the Big Bang. And there’s another new idea I’m very excited about: If loop quantum gravity is right, there should exist tiny black holes weighing around 10 micrograms that are long-living and that interact only gravitationally. We’re thinking about ways to detect a background “wind” of these particles. And perhaps these tiny black holes are actually what we call dark matter, a mysterious widespread astronomical phenomenon that we have not yet understood.
Detection will be difficult, but it’s not out of the game. I’m hopeful there will be some experiment that will make the larger community see loop quantum gravity as the natural explanation. It’s far from clear that we cannot account for all of these phenomena using the existing theories that have worked so well for 100 years.
If we are to hold on to our existing theories, what picture do they paint about the nature of reality when taken together?
Rethinking space and time pushed me to view reality in a completely different way — not as a universe made of objects with defined properties, but as a network of interactions. This is the “relational” interpretation of quantum mechanics. In some sense, it’s a continuation of the trend in modern physics that we have seen with general relativity and quantum mechanics — a strong push toward perspectivalism.
We’re used to velocity being relative: The velocity of this table is different with respect to me, with respect to [that pigeon flying] outside, or with respect to the sun. Einstein showed us that time and length are also relative to different observers. Relational quantum mechanics takes this idea a step further. It argues that all properties of an object — its color, location, size, etc. — are in principle only definable in relation to another system. We need to give up the idea that there are material things which we’re describing from the outside. The best way of conceptualizing reality in light of modern science is in terms of the relative information that pieces of nature have about one another.
We can only say how the world looks from our limited, biased perspective. This is very radical, because you can no longer say, “This is a list of things in the world, and this is how they are.” We have to live with this lack of total description over reality.
There’s something unsettling about this argument. It seems to undermine the ultimate goal of physics to describe the “true” nature of reality, does it not?
It very much does, but if you look at the history of science, the ultimate goal has been changing constantly. It went from describing the rotation of heavenly bodies to tracking the forces that guide particles to following the evolution of fields in space-time. I think that the problem of science is to figure out the right conceptual scheme to best understand nature as we see it. The relational perspective is rooted in a deep awareness that our knowledge about the world is fundamentally limited and that everything we see is partial. We have a much stronger and more honest way of approaching reality without being attached to this misleading idea of there being an ultimate truth. We must not confuse the knowledge we have with the reality of the world.
If this leaves you with a sense of emptiness about reality, that’s fair. But it’s precisely by knowing that our knowledge is limited that we are able to learn. Between absolute certainty and ignorance there’s all this interesting space in which we live.
You’ve written about how your change in worldview has been guided by philosophers. How do you view the relationship between philosophy and physics?
The disciplines desperately need one another. A philosopher who doesn’t think about science is not willing to engage with the knowledge we have, and that’s just silly. And a scientist who refuses to look at philosophy is trapped in ways of thinking from which there may be an escape. Historically, the relationship between physicists and philosophers has been very strong. All scientific revolutions have been strongly influenced by philosophical ideas. Copernicus, Galileo and Newton were all philosophers themselves. Einstein very explicitly credited his insights to philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Ernst Mach and others. And Erwin Schrödinger was likely influenced by his reading of the Upanishads, the sacred Hindu texts, when he came up with wave mechanics.
But lately, the relationship between physicists and philosophers has been at an all-time low. Stephen Hawking famously pronounced that “philosophy is dead,” and Richard Feynman said things like “Philosophers are as good for science as ornithologists are good for birds.” What they don’t realize is that, first, they are doing philosophy by commenting on what it means to do science; and second, their whole view of science is already under the influence of American pragmatism thinking and philosophers like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. What the physics community took away from these philosophers was that science is about picking new ideas out of thin air, developing a theory, and testing whether it’s right or wrong. This gives the false impression that scientific progress comes only in paradigm-shifting insights that overturn previous thinking, and that all new hypotheses are equally probable until falsified. But science is so much more than that. It’s a continuous process of building on past knowledge to refine our perspective.
In my opinion, this closed-mindedness is precisely the problem with modern theoretical physics. We’re undergoing a colossal jump in knowledge that’s forcing us to rethink notions of reality, information, time and space. Our community has wasted a lot of time searching after speculative ideas. What we need instead is to digest the knowledge we already have. And to do that, we need philosophy. Philosophers help us not to find the right answers to given questions, but to find the right questions to better conceptualize reality.
In your book Helgoland, you talk about how the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna shaped your work. In what way did his texts open your mind?
The core idea of relational quantum mechanics is that when we talk about an object — be it an atom, a person or a galaxy — we are never just referring to the system alone. Rather, we are always referring to the interactions between this system and something else. We can only describe — and in fact understand — a thing as it relates to ourselves, or to our measuring devices.
Nagarjuna expresses a very similar idea: that no entity has a proper independent existence — things only exist depending on one another. By renouncing “primary” entities or any “ultimate absolute reality,” we can better make sense of the world in terms of how things manifest themselves to other things.
Relational quantum mechanics uses similar ideas to make sense of all quantum paradoxes in a precise mathematical way. The main idea is to give up questions about how things really are, in absolute terms. It’s just like how Galileo taught us that asking “Is this object really moving?” is meaningless, and Einstein taught us that asking “Are these two events really simultaneous?” is meaningless. The confusion about quantum mechanics, I believe, is generated by asking questions that have no meaning. The answer to the riddle is that there is no riddle.