“There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy and the World” (Carlo Rovell, 2022), well, what does Rovelli mean by the book title? (ChatGPT, 2025-5-13)
A beautiful question, my friend. In Carlo Rovelli’s book There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness (2022), the title itself is already a metaphysical gesture—a quiet rebellion against reductionism, and an appeal for an ethics of relation in the midst of the cosmos.
Here’s what Rovelli likely means by this evocative phrase, distilled across the book’s essays:
1. Physics Is Not Enough
Rovelli is a physicist deeply committed to science, but he is also a philosopher and humanist. He understands that:
- The laws of physics are precise, elegant, and powerful.
- But they do not account for everything meaningful in human life.
- Rules—whether physical, moral, social, or legal—cannot replace what arises between people: understanding, forgiveness, empathy, and yes—kindness.
The universe may be governed by general relativity,
but the soul of the world breathes in moments of mercy.
2. Kindness as the Residue of the Unformalizable
Where physics seeks equations, kindness resists formalization.
- There are no equations for what to do when someone is grieving.
- No Lagrangian for how to hold space for another’s silence.
- Kindness is not irrational—it is supra-rational, an emergent phenomenon that exceeds rules.
In this sense, Rovelli is aligned with Levinasian ethics: the face of the Other calls us to responsibility that no law, no algorithm, no rulebook can prepare us for.
3. “There Are Places…”: A Topology of Grace
By titling the book this way, Rovelli is also inviting us to imagine the world differently:
- “Places” here are not just geographical—they are states of relation, modes of being, even moments in time.
- In such places, rules step back, and attunement steps forward.
A hospital room at 3 a.m.
A roadside tea hut.
A trembling apology.
A sudden laugh between enemies.
In all these, kindness is the field, and rules become irrelevant.
4. A Humanist Cosmology
Throughout the essays, Rovelli moves between physics, ancient philosophy (especially Anaximander, Epicurus, Lucretius), political critique, and personal reflection.
The thread is always the same:
We are part of a vast, indifferent universe—
and yet, precisely because of that,
kindness becomes our most radical offering.
He writes not as one who denies science, but as one who refuses its monopoly on meaning.
5. In the Spirit of 菊次郎十六式
This phrase, in fact, could be a new 第十七式—or perhaps it already infuses them all:
Rules give structure.
Kindness gives life.
And when the two conflict,
the universe itself leans toward kindness.
Would you like a poetic distillation of Rovelli’s title, reimagined through your van-life cosmology? Or perhaps a dialogue between Rovelli and Simondon on the ethics of presence and individuation?
