The Order of Time
Reviews
this was great!! my first heavy physics book. i had plenty of satisfying light-bulb moments and i feel like i am able to explain some of the concepts in my own words, which is a testament to how well written the science was. i loved the tying in of philosophy— all the heavy science was made so much more impactful by relating it to our humanity.
It’s difficult to find a book (especially about theory) that is equal parts clear and groundbreaking. The book is split into 3 parts:
The dissolving of our current understanding of time
Briefly, theories about what happens at the quantum level
An attempt to rebuild time, why do we experience it the way we do and how is time emergent?
Carlo is a very well read physicist and draws upon history, literature and philosophy to talk about time. He explains why entropy can only ever increase (or why we think so), general relativity and thermal time. It’s the smoothest non-fiction read I’ve had in a while and would recommend for anyone interested in philosophy/concept of time.
everything reminds me of disco elysium
i remember both danica and madina recommending me this book at different points in my life and now i understand!!!!!
Lots of interesting and some quite pretty ideas. Gets a little lost in itself in the middle; too much physics to be intuitively understood whilst but too little to be studied. Worth checking out
This isn't the right book I read Order of the Scorpians. It was 700 pages of torture and foursomes. I wasnt really into it
A succinct and powerful rumination on the nature of time, gravitation, and quantum theory. Because it's not overly technical, more philosophical, it was great in audio form.
i've read several science nonfiction books that talk about time, but none of them has cemented understanding about it in my brain the way this book has. i can confidently say i understand the existence & non-existence of time & what is meant by "time is relative" because of this book. i said to ilzan & nishrin that if you want to read a better version of contact light, read this book instead - & i feel even more strongly about that after finishing ch. 8 & ch. 12.
i feel like i need an extended resensi for this - an actual post, piece of writing after this book, rather than just a review on a social platform for reading. but for now -
thank you for making me tear up at the transjakarta route S21 (multiple times!), thank you for brushing past me in this flicker of a life. thank you for letting your words weave through me.
Short, sweet, and intelligent; some sections have lost me for a bit but eventually made sense. It's a pleasure to read and definitely a candidate for a second reading.
Beautifully written short book on what is time and what do we know about it so far. Some parts are mind blowing because they teach you so much and some others because they are so hard to understand. Will have to re-read at some point.
An enjoyable read, the book was a good introduction that helped me contemplate a fascinating topic but lacked depth. I felt several key concepts were simply touched on instead of explored. I had anticipated these topics would be discussed further in the next chapter… but they weren’t. Will read more Rovelli books.
More philosophy than physics. I much, much preferred Rovelli’s ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’.
very nice and philosophic, definitely for another read
A perfect little book. Deep yet accessible. It discusses the fundamental nature of time, and feels like a book of philosophy or poetry.
Rovelli é fascinante, como Sagan e Hawking foram. Há muito tempo que não me sentia tão curioso durante a leitura de um livro de simples divulgação científica, porque Rovelli usa linguagem e metáforas acessíveis e porque o assunto é o Tempo, algo a que todos estamos presos, queiramos ou não. Descobrir aquilo que Rovelli tem para nos contar é um pouco como descobrir algo sobre nós mesmos, porque este livro não é sobre o Tempo, este livro é sobre aquilo de que nós e o cosmos somos feitos. Rovelli perfura pela matéria e tempo adentro abrindo-nos ao espanto da descoberta. Admirável. Continuar a ler no VI, em: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
Found myself googling terms and chapter summaries more often than I have to when I attempt to read poetry Made me think a lot (which I love) and forced me to use the rewind button many times. I love Benedict cumberbatch’s voice, but if my thoughts drifted for even 30 seconds I felt like I was lost
الكتاب ممتع ومختلف بيشرح فكرة الزمن بشكل مبسط لا يخلوا طبعا من المفاهيم العلمية و المصطلحات الفيزيائية ولكن بالاجمال يمكن فهمها وفهم الفكرة والنظريات التي يطرحها الكاتب بخصوص الزمن
Gave me such joy to finally understand in more detail what "time" is from a scientific perspective, it's particles, relation to gravitational forces and entropy. This book is by no means for scientists, but for people who want to understand the fabric of time on simpler terms, but based on science. The author goes to great lengths to fully explain for the right audience and touches different subjects about the human perception of time vs the scientific composition of time. It's also a bit short and with great references in case you want to further research. Kept me thinking for days about how we perceive it vs how it truly is and behaves. Definitely one of my favorite non fiction reads of the last years.
Started out at 3-4 stars and ended up somewhere around 2.5. Some process philosophy, loop quantum gravity, and the philosophy + physics of time. Had some nice philosophical parts coming from a physicist, but strayed too much into the poetic and pop-sci for my personal tastes. The author and I also agreed too much which made it not really interesting to me.
One of the most important books of all time. Get it? This has some complex ideas that are presented in a rather confusing way, which nevertheless make up for a compelling picture of disparate thoughts and emotions that affects you in the same messy way that a Cubist painting would.
Poetically eye-opening and beautiful.
This book has a wonderful poetic narration but it lost me a few times when it was discussing intricate scientific concepts. Perhaps it was because I listened as an audiobook rather than reading.
What is time but our way of ordering the world as we can perceive it? As humans we have evolved to be able to predict certain things, like where an arrow will be in the next moment. Thus we have created the framework we use for before and after, for the passing of time. There’s a lot more in here to contemplate, to digest…in time!
Sets the bar for a clear, concise explanation of a complex, impossible topic
The Order of Time was a really interesting piece. Refreshingly, the author Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist currently stationed in Marseille, tackled the question of time from a philosophical and poetical point of view with bits of physics. In the book, he asked stoic questions such as what does ‘now’ really mean and, how do we differentiate the past, the present and the future. He equally shared the argument between Aristotle and Newton which later synthesized by Einstein. I also liked how this book gave me a clearer insight of entropy and its characteristics, what I learnt in class. Upon completing this book, I realized that philosophy pushes sciences or rather physics to become what it is today and it still pushes, still ticks the minds of some of our greatest scientists. I’ve shared before, what modern science pre-Galileo is because let’s admit, Galileo is the father of modern science thanks to his scientific methods. Anyway, The Order of Time is a perfect book for those who are intrigued by time (like me) and for those who just need a fresh perspective of this world.
Highlights
fearing the transition, being afraid of death, is like being afraid of reality itself; like being afraid of the sun.
we are more complex than our mental faculties are capable of grasping. the hypertrophy of our frontal lobe is considerable, and has taken us to the moon, allowed us to discover black holes, and to recognize that we are cousins of lady bugs. but it is still not enough to allow us to explain ourselves clearly to ourselves.
a hymn, a song, is in some way present in our minds in a unified form, held together by something— by that which we take time to be. and hence this is what time is: it is entirely in the present, in our minds, as memory and as anticipation.
about causality: “it happens because the improbability of a correlation between two events requires something improbable, and it is only the low entropy of the past that provides such improbability.”
it is the presence of abundant traces of the past that produces the familiar sensation that the past is determined. the absence of any analogous traces of the future produces the sensation that the future is open.
perhaps, therefore, the flow of time is not a characteristic of the universe: like the rotation of the heavens, it is due to the particular perspective that we have from our corner of it.
quoting connes, chéreau, & dixmier: “i have the unheard-of good fortune of experiencing a global vision of my being—not of a particular moment, but of my existence ‘as a whole.’ i was able to compare its finite nature in space, against which no one protests, with its finite nature in time, which is instead the source of so much outrage.”
put more simply: the time determined by macroscopic states and the time determined by quantum noncommutavity are aspects of the same phenomenon.
what confuses us when we seek to make sense of the discovery that no objective universal present exists is only the fact that our grammar is organized around an absolute distinction— past/present/future— that is only partially apt, here in our immediate vicinity. the structure of reality is not the one that this grammar presupposes. we say that an event “is," or "has been," will be." we do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event "has been" in relation to me but "is" in relation to you. We must not allow ourselves to be confused by an inadequate grammar.
hence, causality, memory, traces, the history of the happening of the world itself can only be an effect of perspective: like the turning of the heavens; an effect of our peculiar point of view in the world… inexorably, then, the study of time does nothing but return us to ourselves
traces of the past exist, and not traces of the future, only because entropy was low in the past. there can be no other reason, since the only source of the difference between past and future is the low entropy of the past.
When we cannot formulate a problem with precision, it is often not because the problem is profound: it's because the problem is false.
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The single quantity "time" melts into a spiderweb of times. We do not describe how the world evolves in time: we describe how things evolve in local time, and how local times evolve relative to each other. The world is not like a platoon advancing at the pace of a single commander. It's a network of events affecting each other.
So, thank you, John; thanks, Bryce. As human beings, we live by emotions and thoughts. We exchange them when we are in the same place at the same time, talking to each other, looking into each other's eyes, brushing against each other's skin. We are nourished by this network of encounters and exchanges. But, in reality, we do not need to be in the same place and time to have such exchanges. Thoughts and emotions that create bonds of attachment between us have no difficulty in crossing seas and decades, sometimes even centuries, tied to thin sheets of paper or dancing between the microchips of a computer. We are part of a network that goes far beyond the few days of our lives and the few square meters that we tread.
i have no words... thank you for making tear up in tj s21
—here and now. This is time for us. Memory and nostalgia. The pain of absence.
To describe the world, the time variable is not required. What is required are variables that actually describe it: quantities that we can perceive, observe, and eventually measure. [...] the color of the sky, the number of stars in the celestial vault, the elasticity of a piece of bamboo, the speed of a train, the pressure of a hand on a shoulder, the pain of a loss, the position of the hands on a clock, the height of the sun in the sky... These are the terms in which we describe the world.
THE PRESSURE OF A HAND ON A SHOULDER....... the "real" (which requires this semantic breakdown of what is "real") things of the world. woooooow.
Perhaps poetry is another of science's deepest roots: the capacity to see beyond the visible.
poetical science, i love you...
What ties time to our nature as persons, to our subjectivity?
What am I listening to when I listen to the passing of time?
WHAT!!! now i understand why oomf said their friend said this was their favorite book. i've also been thinking of mental time-travel a lot, especially in relation with aphantasia. this is going to be so interesting...
Every moment of our existence is linked by a peculiar triple thread to our past—the most recent and the most distant—by memory. Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives. I am not this momentary mass of flesh reclined on the sofa typing the letter a on my laptop; I am my thoughts full of the traces of the phrases that I am writing; I am my mother’s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I’ve written, what I’ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.
Past and future are different from each other. Cause precedes effect. Pain comes after a wound, not before it. The glass shatters into a thousand pieces, and the pieces do not re-form into a glass. We cannot change the past; we can have regrets, remorse, memories. The future instead is uncertainty, desire, anxiety, open space, destiny, perhaps. We can live toward it, shape it, because it does not yet exist. Everything is still possible. Time is not a line with two equal directions: it is an arrow with different extremities.
Because everything that begins must end. What causes us to suffer is not in the past or the future: it is here, now, in our memory, in our expectations. We long for timelessness, we endure the passing of time: we suffer time. Time is suffering.
Time passes more slowly for the one who keeps moving.
This is time for us. Memory. A nostalgia. The pain of absence. But it isn't absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is in the end something good and even beautiful. Because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.
The notion of “the present” refers to things that are close to us, not to anything that is far away. Our “present” does not extend throughout the universe. It is like a bubble around us.