Time Reborn

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Time Reborn
Author Lee Smolin
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science
Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date
 April 23, 2013
Media type Print (hardcover); digital download; audiobook
Pages 352 pp
ISBN 978-0547511726

Time Reborn, subtitled From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, is a 2013 book by theoretical physicist Lee Smolin.

Content and concepts

Smolin argues for what he calls a revolutionary view that time is real, in contrast to existing scientific orthodoxy which holds that time is merely a "stubbornly persistent illusion" (Einstein's words).[1] Smolin reasons that physicists have improperly rejected the reality of time because they confuse their mathematical models—which are timeless but deal in abstractions that do not exist—with reality.[1] Smolin hypothesizes instead that the very laws of physics are not fixed, but that they actually evolve over time.[2]

Smolin asserts that overturning the existing orthodoxy is the best hope for finding solutions to contemporary physics problems, such as bringing gravity into line with the rest of the currently accepted models,[1] the nature of the quantum world and its unification with spacetime and cosmology.[2] Outside science, Smolin asserts his views have important implications for human agency, and on how our social, political, economic and environmental decisions affect our future,[2] Smolin saying that contrary to deterministic philosophies derived from conventional physics, humans do have the power to exert control over climate change, our economic system and our technology.[3]

The book's topic was the subject of the author's 2013 presentation at the Royal Society of Arts.[2]

Reception

The New York Times' James Gleick wrote that Smolin's arguments from science and history were "as provocative, original, and unsettling as any I’ve read in years," contradicting the commonly accepted views of H.G. Wells, Hermann Minkowski, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Plato; Gleick predicted it will ring false to many contemporaries in theoretical physics.[4] Gleick further wrote that Smolin has a "fairly puritanical view of what science should and should not do"—disfavoring multiverses or other non-testable concepts or quests for timeless truths, but allowing that science creates “effective theories” even though they are incomplete, of limited domains, and approximate.[4]

Kirkus Reviews described the book, which omits mathematical explanations, as being as much philosophy as science, and as providing "a flood of ideas from an imaginative thinker."[5] For the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, author Rick Searle wrote that Time Reborn is "just as much a diagnosis of contemporary economic and political ills" as it is a book about physics.[3]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Monk, Ray (June 6, 2013). "Time Reborn by Lee Smolin – review". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 28, 2013. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Time Reborn: a new theory of time - a new view of the world". Royal Society of Arts. May 21, 2013. Archived from the original on July 28, 2013. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Searle, Rick (July 15, 2013). "Time Lost: Scene 1". Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Archived from the original on August 9, 2013. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Gleick, James (June 6, 2013). "Time Regained!". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 28, 2013. 
  5. ↑ "Time Reborn / Kirkus Reviews". Kirkus Reviews. 2013. Archived from the original on July 28, 2013. 

External links

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