Media coverage of Carlo Rovelli's book _The Order of Time_ has had headlines like "[There is no such thing as past or future][1]", or "[Carlo Rovelli: 'Time does not exist'][2]." 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.

  [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/14/carlo-rovelli-exploding-commonsense-notions-order-of-time-interview
  [2]: http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/carlo-rovelli-time-does-not-exist-3464555-Jul2017/