The order of time
Carlo Rovelli (Author), Erica Segre (Translator), Simon Carnell (Translator)
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
1 online resource (240 pages) : illustrations
9780735216129, 9780241292532, 0735216126, 0241292530
1035368003
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
Originally published in Italian: L'ordine del tempo (Milan : Adelphi Edizioni, 2017)
In English, translated from the Italian