An article in a newspaper has something in common with a Japanese kōan or a European sonnet: limited in size and form, it can transmit little more than one piece of information, a single argument, one reflection, a single emotion. And yet it can speak about everything and anything.
The pieces collected here, which were published in various newspapers over the last decade, speak of poets, scientists and philosophers who have influenced me in some way, of travels, of my generation, of atheism, of black holes, telescopes, psychedelic experience, intellectual surprises … and much else. They are like brief diary entries recording the intellectual adventures of a physicist who is interested in many things and who is searching for new ideas – for a wide but coherent perspective.
The title has been borrowed from a phrase used in one of the articles: a phrase that perhaps conveys something of the spirit shared by these articles. Then again, perhaps it just reveals the spirit of the kind of world that I would like to live in …
Marseille, 2020