Time Reborn - From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe - E-book - ePub

In Time Reborn, Lee Smolin, one of our foremost physicists and thinkers offers a radical new view of the nature of time and the cosmosNothing seems more real than time passing. We experience life itself as a succession of moments. Yet throughout history, the idea that time is an illusion has been a religious and philosophical commonplace. We identify certain truths as 'eternal' constants, from moral principles to the laws of mathematics and nature: these are laws that exist not inside time, but outside it.
From Newton and Einstein to today's string theorists and quantum physicists, the widest consensus is that the universe is governed by absolute, timeless laws. In Time Reborn, Lee Smolin argues that this denial of time is holding back both physics, and our understanding of the universe. We need a major revolution in scientific thought: one that embraces the reality of time and places it at the centre of our thinking.
E may equal mc squared now, but that wasn't always the case. Similarly, as our understanding of the universe develops, Newton's fundamental laws might not remain so fundamental. Time, Smolin concludes, is not an illusion: it is the best clue we have to fundamental reality. Time Reborn explains how the true nature of time impacts on us, our world, and our universe.'The strongest dose of clarity in written form to have come along in decades.
The implications go far beyond physics, to economics, politics, and personal philosophy. Time Reborn places reality above theory in stronger and clearer terms than ever before, and the result is a path to better theory and potentially to a better society as well. Will no doubt be remembered as one of the essential books of the 21st century' Jaron Lanier[Praise for Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics]: 'The best book about contemporary science written for the layman that I have ever read .