Introducing Time

by Craig Callender

Book Overview

What is time? The 5th-century philosopher St Augustine famously said that he knew what time was, so long as no one asked him. Is time a fourth dimension similar to space or does it flow in some sense?... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1840462639
• ISBN13: 9781840462630
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Totem Books
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Destined to be a timeless classic

Introducing Time is one of the Introducing series most popular selections. For an Introducing book it is also one of the most detailed, thought provoking, wide-ranging and heady science volumes around. If you want to know anything about time then Introducing Time does just that and then some more, but be prepared for lots of difficult diverse thinking. In most cases the first 100 pages will be more than enough for most people and the Introducing series could easily have made this book 200 pages long with that material alone but instead has condensed the opening philosophical thought on time into a shorter amount and goes straight into Einstein, relativity, lots on time travel and a great finish on entropy. Most of these topics are actually books in their own right such as Introducing Relativity and Introducing Einstein so Introducing Time really is good value for money. If you are thinking about starting a collection of science titles from the Introducing series then you would do well to get this book or add it to your collection for two reasons. First of all, Introducing Time includes the best explanation of Boltzmann's statistical mechanics and entropy I have read anywhere. It could be worth it for that alone. You may not expect entropy to have such an impact on the topic of time and that can be a very nice surprise when reading that it does. The second is really just the breath of the coverage that time gets in this book. Even those who have read Stephen Hawking's `A brief history of time' will come away from this one with a whole lot more than thought possible. Core material: Clocks Psychological time Time scenarios Relationalism and absolute time Relative and non-relative Tenseless and tensed Dimensions Motion and change Time flows Galilean relativity Einstein's relativity Simultaneity Lightcones Logic Time travel Impossibility Causal loops Physics and time travel Spacetime curvature Godel Taub-NUT-Misner spacetime Cosmic string theory Wormholes Mobius twist Branching time Space and limits Geroch's theorem Big bang Closed and open time The direction of time Thermodynamics Entropy Statistical mechanics Loschmidt paradox Universe's statistical development Boundary conditions Temporal double-standard Time reversal Quantum gravity Wheeler-DeWitt Inexistence of time This is far from an easy book but time is a detailed topic and should get the full treatment if it should be treated at all. For this reason Introducing Time is quite simply one of the most important and revealing books on something that people take for granted. It's the kind of book you come away with a mind full of awe. If Introducing Time doesn't change your worldview then nothing will.

a surprisingly in depth introduction to time

Introducing Time starts off with Aristotle's view on time then goes on to talk about many philosophical and scientific views of time. It includes Newton's absolute time, Einstein's special and general relativity as they relate to time, including Godel Universes, and also Boltzman's statistical mechanics based view of time. All in all a lot of information in such a short book.

A highlight of the series

Great book. By the time you get to the end, you'll know quite a lot about this topic and the whole theory, but you'll be pretty confused. Why confused? Because it's a hard topic to understand or interpret. And the book explains that as well as it can. But it sure will make you think.

Time is easy to understand, until you start to think about it. These authors did that, they thought

Time is a concept that all humans have a fundamental grasp of. We all know that there is a direction to the events of our lives and that once an event happens, to the best of our knowledge it will always have happened. We break it down into units of years, days, hours, and minutes and in the last minute of some sporting events, tenths of seconds. However, when we really try to get a precise intellectual handle on it, time becomes fuzzy and it is very difficult to be precise. The passage of time is also relative to the situation; a few minutes in a dentist chair can appear to be much longer, yet a few hours with our true love can seem like minutes. In this book, Callender and Edney describe some of the attempts by scientists and philosophers to precisely define what time is. Some argue that to be logically consistent, time cannot exist. That of course seems absurd, whatever else we may know, at least locally, time does have an existence and a direction. Newton, Einstein, Godel and others have refined the concept, Einstein in particular demonstrated that the passage of time is slowed when the objects are traveling at high rates of speed. Although the authors do an excellent job using cartoons and other visual devices, the true nature of time is a difficult topic. Like the apparent fate of the universe, in the end, time simply comes down to an overall increase in entropy, for that is the way we recognize the passage of time. This is an excellent book about an apparently simple, yet very complex subject. Time is a subject that we all think we know, until we really start to think about it.

An excellent introduction to a difficult subject

The nature of time is a difficult subject. Fortunately, Craig Callender (dig the name!) has made the subject (or at least the most relevant views and issues) easier to understand in this superb little book. He begins by surveying what may be considered different types of time, including our psychological experience of temporal succession, measured time, and biological time. He then covers the difference between an absolutist (i.e., temporal succession is independent of any change in the universe) and a relational view (i.e., time just *is* change in the universe), as well as the discussion over whether time really has a direction, or whether or not reality is a space-time 'block' whose moments are individuated by an entity's location on the space-time block. In doing so, Callender surveys various arguments for or against these views, and he discusses even more intuitively odd scenarios such as backward causation and time travel. The last third or so of the book deals with time and its relation to physical laws, such as the entropy law. In treating the subject, Callender introduces the reader to all sorts of odd theoretical entities like wormholes, lightcones, and mobius twists in time. All in all, this is a great book for anyone interested in thinking a bit about what, exactly, time *is*. It is especially useful as a precursor to more academic works like MacBeath and LePoidevin's anthology, The Philosophy of Time.