The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time

The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time

Hardcover edition
Author Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Country United States
Language English
Subject Physics, cosmology, philosophy of time
Genre Non-fiction
Publication date
 December 8, 2014
Media type Print
Pages 566 pp.
ISBN 978-1107074064
Preceded by Time Reborn (by Smolin)
The Religion of the Future (by Unger)'

The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy is a non-fiction book by the American theoretical physicist Lee Smolin and the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger. The book was initially published by Cambridge University Press on December 8, 2014.[1][2][3]

Synopsis

The book discusses a number of philosophical and physical ideas on the true role of time in the Universe. The text is roughly divided into two halves, the first one written by Unger, and the second by Smolin, both developing the same themes in different ways, with Smolin being more focused on the physics.[4]

Review

You might expect a book co-authored by Smolin and Unger to be an exchange about science and human values—something, perhaps, in the region of the 1930 dialogue between Einstein and the polymath Rabindranath Tagore. But The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time is not that kind of thing: it is a big and daunting book, harder to read than recent works by either author. The first section, by Unger, includes among other things an exploration of the global, irreversible and continuous attributes of time, followed by an analysis of proto-ontological assumptions. The second section, by Smolin, contains an approach to solving the meta-law dilemma, outlining linear cyclic models, branching models and branching cyclic cosmologies before it dives into cosmological natural selection, pluralistic cosmological scenarios and the principle of precedence.

—The Guardian[5]

See also

Other books on the philosophy of time include:

References

  1. ↑ "The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy Hardcover – December 8, 2014 - by Roberto Mangabeira Unger (Author), Lee Smolin (Author)". amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-06-24.
  2. ↑ "The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy Hardcover by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin". goodreads.com. Retrieved 2015-06-24.
  3. ↑ "The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time". cambridge.org. Retrieved 2015-06-24.
  4. ↑ "The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time". math.columbia.edu. February 14, 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-25.
  5. ↑ Henderson, Caspar (February 6, 2015). "The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin – review". theguardian.com. Retrieved 2015-06-24.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/10/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.