Three Roads To Quantum Gravity

CHAPTER 4
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THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF PROCESSES,
NOT THINGS
Imagine you are trying to explain to someone why you are so
enamoured of your new girlfriend or boyfriend, and someone
quite sensibly asks you to describe them. Why do our efforts
on such occasions seem so inadequate? Your intuition tells
you that there is something essential about this person, but it
is very hard to put it into words. You describe what they do
for a living, what they like to do for fun, what they look like,
how they act, but somehow this does not seem to convey what
they are really like.
Or imagine that you have fallen into one of those interminable
discussions about culture and national characteristics. It
seems so obvious that the English are different from the
Greeks, who are nothing at all like the Italians, except that
they are both different from the English in the same way. And
how is it that the Chinese seem in certain ways a bit American
in their spirit, when their cultural history is so different and
so much older? Again, it seems that there is something real
here, but most of our attempts to capture it in words seem to
fall short of what we are trying to express.
There is a simple solution to these quandaries: tell a story. If
we narrate the story of our new friend's life, where and how
they grew up, who their parents are and how they raised
them, where they studied, what happened in their past
relationships, we communicate more of what is important
about them than if we attempt to describe how they are now.
The same goes for cultures. It is only when we know some-