Download or read book Space Time and Reality written by Ernesto Lee and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 1998-11 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sentence is false. Is this sentence true? If it is true that the sentence is false then the sentence is true. If it is false that the sentence is false then the sentence is true. This is a logical contradiction. The sentence can not be both true & false simultaneously. The sentence must be true or false. This begins our journey into the nature of the paradox. A paradox is an absurd truth that derives a repugnant conclusion from an unquestionable set of premises. The listener will usually agree with the arguments supporting the conclusion but be unwilling to accept the final inference. To resolve a paradox, we must do one of four things: ignore it, distort it, reject it, or accept it. This thought provoking book, Space, Time, & Reality, seeks to probe the depths of the human mind by leveraging the power of the paradox. This is a book of questions...not answers, & is intended for those who accept or reject & not ignore or distort.
Download or read book The Mathematical Reality written by Alexander Unzicker and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Unzicker is a theoretical physicist and writes about elementary questions of natural philosophy. His critique of contemporary physics Bankrupting Physics (Macmillan) received the 'Science Book of the Year' award (German edition 2010). With The Mathematical Reality, Unzicker presents his most fundamental work to date, which is the result of years of study of natural laws and their historical development.The discovery of fundamental laws of nature has influenced the fate of Homo sapiens more than anything else. Has modern physics already understood these laws? Many puzzles formulated by Albert Einstein or Paul Dirac are still unsolved today, in particular the meaning of fundamental constants. In this book, Unzicker contends that a rational description of nature must do without any constants.A methodological and historical analysis shows, however, that the underlying problem of physics is deep, unexpected and fatal: the concepts of space and time themselves, the basis of science since Newton, could be fundamentally inappropriate for the description of reality, although-or precisely because-they are so easily accessible to human perception.A new understanding of reality can only arise from mathematics. By exploring the three-dimensional unitary sphere, which could replace the concepts of space and time, the author presents a mathematical vision that points the way to a new understanding of reality.
Download or read book The Reality of Time Flow written by Richard T. W. Arthur and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is commonly held that there is no place for the 'now’ in physics, and also that the passing of time is something subjective, having to do with the way reality is experienced but not with the way reality is. Indeed, the majority of modern theoretical physicists and philosophers of physics contend that the passing of time is incompatible with modern physical theory, and excluded in a fundamental description of physical reality. This book provides a forceful rebuttal of such claims. In successive chapters the author explains the historical precedents of the modern opposition to time flow, giving careful expositions of matters relevant to becoming in classical physics, the special and general theories of relativity, and quantum theory, without presupposing prior expertise in these subjects. Analysing the arguments of thinkers ranging from Aristotle, Russell, and Bergson to the proponents of quantum gravity, he contends that the passage of time, understood as a local becoming of events out of those in their past at varying rates, is not only compatible with the theories of modern physics, but implicit in them.
Download or read book The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time written by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin argue for a revolution in our cosmological ideas. Ideal for non-scientists, physicists and cosmologists.
Download or read book Fundamentals written by Frank Wilczek and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fundamentals might be the perfect book for the winter of this plague year. . . . Wilczek writes with breathtaking economy and clarity, and his pleasure in his subject is palpable.” —The New York Times Book Review One of our great contemporary scientists reveals the ten profound insights that illuminate what everyone should know about the physical world In Fundamentals, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek offers the reader a simple yet profound exploration of reality based on the deep revelations of modern science. With clarity and an infectious sense of joy, he guides us through the essential concepts that form our understanding of what the world is and how it works. Through these pages, we come to see our reality in a new way--bigger, fuller, and stranger than it looked before. Synthesizing basic questions, facts, and dazzling speculations, Wilczek investigates the ideas that form our understanding of the universe: time, space, matter, energy, complexity, and complementarity. He excavates the history of fundamental science, exploring what we know and how we know it, while journeying to the horizons of the scientific world to give us a glimpse of what we may soon discover. Brilliant, lucid, and accessible, this celebration of human ingenuity and imagination will expand your world and your mind.
Download or read book Time Reality and Experience written by Craig Callender and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does time seem to flow in one direction? Can we influence the past? Is only the present real? Does relativity conflict with our common understanding of time? Could science do away with time? These questions and others about time are among the most puzzling problems in philosophy and science. In this exciting collection of original articles, eminent philosophers propose novel answers to these and other questions. Based on the latest research in philosophy and physics, these essays will be enjoyable to anyone with a speculative turn of mind.
Download or read book The Order of Time written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. 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. 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.
Download or read book The Foundation of Reality written by David Glick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are space and time fundamental features of our world or might they emerge from something else? The Foundation of Reality brings together metaphysicians and philosophers of physics working on space, time, and fundamentality to address this timely question. Recent developments in the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the understanding of certain approaches to quantum gravity have led philosophers of physics to propose that space and time might be emergent rather than fundamental. But such discussions are often conducted without engagement with those working on fundamentality and related issues in contemporary metaphysics. This book aims to correct this oversight. The diverse contributions to this volume address topics including the nature of fundamentality, the relation of space and time to quantum entanglement, and space and time in theories of quantum gravity. Only through consideration of a range of different approaches to the topic can we hope to get clear on the status of space and time in our contemporary understanding of physical reality.
Download or read book The Road to Reality written by Roger Penrose and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-09 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **WINNER OF THE 2020 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS** The Road to Reality is the most important and ambitious work of science for a generation. It provides nothing less than a comprehensive account of the physical universe and the essentials of its underlying mathematical theory. It assumes no particular specialist knowledge on the part of the reader, so that, for example, the early chapters give us the vital mathematical background to the physical theories explored later in the book. Roger Penrose's purpose is to describe as clearly as possible our present understanding of the universe and to convey a feeling for its deep beauty and philosophical implications, as well as its intricate logical interconnections. The Road to Reality is rarely less than challenging, but the book is leavened by vivid descriptive passages, as well as hundreds of hand-drawn diagrams. In a single work of colossal scope one of the world's greatest scientists has given us a complete and unrivalled guide to the glories of the universe that we all inhabit. 'Roger Penrose is the most important physicist to work in relativity theory except for Einstein. He is one of the very few people I've met in my life who, without reservation, I call a genius' Lee Smolin
Download or read book Time Space and Knowledge written by Tarthang Tulku and published by Dharma Publications. This book was released on 1977 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed for its lucid presentation, TSK blends reasoning and experiential inquiry to offer a unique path of transformation. A deeply exhilarating book, TSK gives readers a language to ask the questions that conventional training teaches us to ignore. Thirty-five exercises reunite philosophy with direct experience.
Download or read book The Physics of Reality written by Richard L. Amoroso and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A truly Galilean-class volume, this book introduces a new method in theory formation, completing the tools of epistemology. It covers a broad spectrum of theoretical and mathematical physics by researchers from over 20 nations from four continents. Like Vigier himself, the Vigier symposia are noted for addressing avant-garde, cutting-edge topics in contemporary physics. Among the six proceedings honoring J.-P. Vigier, this is perhaps the most exciting one as several important breakthroughs are introduced for the first time. The most interesting breakthrough in view of the recent NIST experimental violations of QED is a continuation of the pioneering work by Vigier on tight bound states in hydrogen. The new experimental protocol described not only promises empirical proof of large-scale extra dimensions in conjunction with avenues for testing string theory, but also implies the birth of the field of unified field mechanics, ushering in a new age of discovery. Work on quantum computing redefines the qubit in a manner that the uncertainty principle may be routinely violated. Other breakthroughs occur in the utility of quaternion algebra in extending our understanding of the nature of the fermionic singularity or point particle. There are several other discoveries of equal magnitude, making this volume a must-have acquisition for the library of any serious forward-looking researchers.
Download or read book The Fabric of the Cosmos written by Brian Greene and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes “an astonishing ride” through the universe (The New York Times) that makes us look at reality in a completely different way. Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.
Download or read book Reality Is Not What It Seems written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The man who makes physics sexy . . . the scientist they’re calling the next Stephen Hawking.” —The Times Magazine From the New York Times–bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Helgoland, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the universe. What are the elementary ingredients of the world? Do time and space exist? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions. He tells us how our understanding of reality has changed over the centuries and how physicists think about the structure of the universe today. In elegant and accessible prose, Rovelli takes us on a wondrous journey from Democritus to Albert Einstein, from Michael Faraday to gravitational waves, and from classical physics to his own work in quantum gravity. As he shows us how the idea of reality has evolved over time, Rovelli offers deeper explanations of the theories he introduced so concisely in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. This book culminates in a lucid overview of quantum gravity, the field of research that explores the quantum nature of space and time, seeking to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. Rovelli invites us to imagine a marvelous world where space breaks up into tiny grains, time disappears at the smallest scales, and black holes are waiting to explode—a vast universe still largely undiscovered.
Download or read book The Mystery of Existence written by John Leslie and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling study of the origins of all that exists, including explanations of the entire material world, traces the responses of philosophers and scientists to the most elemental and haunting question of all: why is anything here—or anything anywhere? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why not nothing? It includes the thoughts of dozens of luminaries from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas and Leibniz to modern thinkers such as physicists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, philosophers Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit, philosophers of religion Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, and the Dalai Lama. The first accessible volume to cover a wide range of possible reasons for the existence of all reality, from over 50 renowned thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, and the Dalai Lama Features insights by scientists, philosophers, and theologians Includes informative and helpful editorial introductions to each section Provides a wealth of suggestions for further reading and research Presents material that is both comprehensive and comprehensible
Download or read book Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya written by Miguel Leon-Portilla and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1990-09-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this second English-language edition of one of his most notable works, Miguel León-Portilla explores the Maya Indians’ remarkable concepts of time. At the book’s first appearance Evon Z. Vogt, Curator of Middle American Ethnology in Harvard University, predicted that it would become "a classic in anthropology," a prediction borne out by the continuing critical attention given to it by leading scholars. Like no other people in history, the ancient Maya were obsessed by the study of time. Their sages framed its cycles with tireless exactitude. Yet their preoccupation with time was not limited to calendrics; it was a central trait in their evolving culture. In this absorbing work León-Portilla probes the question, What did time really mean for the ancient Maya in terms of their mythology, religious thought, worldview, and everyday life? In his analysis of key Maya texts and computations, he reveals one of the most elaborate attempts of the human mind to penetrate the secrets of existence.
Download or read book Reality and Its Order written by Werner Heisenberg and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-30 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available here for the first time in English, "Reality and Its Order" is a remarkable philosophical text by Werner Heisenberg, the father of quantum mechanics and one of the leading scientists of the 20th century. Written during the wartime years and initially distributed only to his family and trusted friends, the essay describes Heisenberg’s philosophical view of how we understand the natural world and our role within it. In this volume, the essay is introduced by the physicist Helmut Rechenberg and annotated by the science historian Ernst Peter Fischer. The content, particularly within its historical context, will be of great interest to many physicists, philosophers and historians of science.
Download or read book The Janus Point written by Julian Barbour and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time -- and shapes the destiny of the universe. Time is among the universe's greatest mysteries. Why, when most laws of physics allow for it to flow forward and backward, does it only go forward? Physicists have long appealed to the second law of thermodynamics, held to predict the increase of disorder in the universe, to explain this. In The Janus Point, physicist Julian Barbour argues that the second law has been misapplied and that the growth of order determines how we experience time. In his view, the big bang becomes the "Janus point," a moment of minimal order from which time could flow, and order increase, in two directions. The Janus Point has remarkable implications: while most physicists predict that the universe will become mired in disorder, Barbour sees the possibility that order -- the stuff of life -- can grow without bound. A major new work of physics, The Janus Point will transform our understanding of the nature of existence.
