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The Order of Time




Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions 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.

"In the book he deals with time on the quantum level (essentially, time does not exist here) and at the level of the gravitational universe (in relativistic theory) where every part of the universe has it’s own, local, time. Then finally looking at time from the human perspective and how it might be built on the basis of entropy so that we see time as a series of events given direction by the increase in disorder as ‘time’ progresses. Many books on abstruse subjects leave you with a sense of bafflement - our human senses and sensibilities are built by evolution to deal with our world of trees, rivers and animals, not atoms and black holes. This book tackles this topic and leaves you with a sense of wonder and delight. Highly recommended." (Reviewers comment)



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