When his great Italian friend Michele Besso died, Einstein wrote a moving letter to Michele’s sister: ‘Michele has left this strange world a little before me. T

When his great Italian friend Michele Besso died, Einstein wrote a moving letter to Michele’s sister: ‘Michele has left this strange world a little before me. This means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion.’ ... ... Many times in the past we have realized that it is our immediate intuitions that are imprecise: if we had kept to these we would still believe that the Earth is flat and that it is orbited by the sun. Our intuitions have developed on the basis of our limited experience. When we look a little further ahead we discover that the world is not as it appears to us: the Earth is round, and in Cape Town their feet are up and their heads are down. To trust immediate intuitions rather than collective examination that is rational, careful and intelligent is not wisdom: it is the presumption of an old man who refuses to believe that the great world outside his village is any different from the one which he has always known. -- Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli