The order of time /
Carlo Rovelli ; translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell.
- 240 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm.
Originally published in Italian: L'ordine del tempo (Milan : Adelphi Edizioni, 2017).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Perhaps time is the greatest remaining mystery -- Part I: The crumbling of time. Loss of unity ; Loss of direction ; The end of the present ; Loss of independence ; Quanta of time -- Part II: The world without time. The world is made of events, not things ; The inadequacy of grammar ; Dynamics as relation -- Part III: The sources of time. Time is ignorance ; Perspective ; What emerges from a particularity ; The scent of the madeleine ; The source of time -- The sister of sleep.
"Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to 'flow'? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. He tears down our assumptions about time one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time."--Dust jacket.
In English, translated from the Italian.
073521610X 9780735216105
2017060293
Cosmology. Presentism (Philosophy) Space and time. Time.