The universe, both within and without, holds much more space than you would think possible. Let’s look at some fundamental principles of physics to see what else there is to learn and unlearn. So the artificial distinction learned as a baby, between “self” and “not-self” is fundamentally wrong. They depend on your perception of the world.įurthermore, when looking at the very fundamentals of the natural world, it becomes obvious that “our body and our brain - the physical platform of our ‘self’ - is, against all intuition, built from the same stuff as ‘not-self,’ and appears to be continuous with it,” Wilczek writes. At this level, light has been divided up into quanta, and these cannot be shared. The interesting thing is that you would not see the flashes at the same time. If you were to sit in a completely dark room with a friend, where the only source of light was dimmed by several layers of cloth, both of you would eventually only see intermittent flashes of light. In a way, you will have to be born again. But if you want to truly understand how the world works, down to a molecular level, you will have to unlearn some things that you taught yourself as a baby. This is obviously the right way to go about it for practical purposes.

As the author puts it, “Babies construct a world-model that accounts for what they experience within the bounds of their perception and environment.” They look at objects and people around them and eventually realize that they are not part of their mothers, but separate from them. They have an unquenchable curiosity and conduct experiments from which they draw conclusions about how the world works.įor example, babies study their own hands, seeing how they move and eventually realizing that they can control them. When they first come into the world, they spend the first months and even years making sense of the world around them on a fundamental level. So get ready to learn how the world around you works! Born againīabies are like little scientists. In “Fundamentals,” Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek attempts to explain the fundamentals of physics. Nowadays, physics is concerned with the smallest particles and the furthest galaxies. Through the discovery of principles such as gravity, pressure, and electromagnetism, the wonders of the natural world can be explained and new inventions become possible. Physics tries to make sense of the world around us.

Fundamentals ten keys to reality review