Media coverage of Carlo Rovelli's book The Order of Time has had headlines like "There is no such thing as past or future", or "Carlo Rovelli: 'Time does not exist'." Is there a way to explain what he means that is more concrete than "the dance of nature does not develop to the rhythm kept by the baton of a single orchestral conductor"? (Rovelli's words from the second linked reference.) To be fair, he precedes that by "elementary processes cannot be ordered along a common succession of instants", which is fairly concrete but leaves a lot of questions open. In particular, what is an elementary process?

Can anybody who has read the relevant papers clarify what he's getting at? I would also like to know just how speculative the ideas in these papers are seen to be within the physics community.

There are a lot of other questions about whether time is real, but I think this one is different because it regards a specific author's claims about time.

Media coverage of Carlo Rovelli's book The Order of Time has had headlines like "There is no such thing as past or future", or "Carlo Rovelli: 'Time does not exist'." Is there a way to explain what he means that is more concrete than "the dance of nature does not develop to the rhythm kept by the baton of a single orchestral conductor"? (Rovelli's words from the second linked reference.) To be fair, he precedes that by "elementary processes cannot be ordered along a common succession of instants", which is fairly concrete but leaves a lot of questions open. In particular, what is an elementary process?

Can anybody who is familiar with Rovelli's work clarify what he's getting at? I would also like to know just how speculative the ideas in these papers are seen to be within the physics community.

There are a lot of other questions about whether time is real, but I think this one is different because it regards a specific author's claims about time.