Name: Matthew Jackson's review of The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
Item: The Order of Time
Rating: 5
Author: Matthew Jackson

Carlo Rovelli

Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe. With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, art and philosophy, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery, inviting us to imagine a world where time is in us and we are not in time.

The Order of Time

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, and Helgoland, 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.

Kenan

The “present of the universe” is meaningless.

'A dazzling book ... the new Stephen Hawking' Sunday Times The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting, consoling journey to discover the meaning of time 'We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come.' Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe. With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. Enlightening and consoling, The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time -- and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves. Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

Najara Valente

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, 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.

Laura Mei

Matthew Jackson

Explains some concepts about time and how relativistic view works in a way that reader feels the author is writing a poem. Such a lovely way to explain stuff. 

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.

Catherine Flanagan

More philosophy than physics. I much, much preferred Rovelli’s ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’.

Johnny Noble

very nice and philosophic, definitely for another read

Kristof Revilak

Daniel Lauzon

A perfect little book. Deep yet accessible. It discusses the fundamental nature of time, and feels like a book of philosophy or poetry.

Nelson Zagalo

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...

jordan

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

Mohamed Nagi

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

Alfredo santos

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.

Mundy Otto Reimer

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.

Harsha G

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.

Teresa Su

Hannah Tierney

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.

Cindy Lieberman

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!

Ben Bleikamp

Sets the bar for a clear, concise explanation of a complex, impossible topic

Fatin Allen

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.

B. K.

4 stars. I liked the first part of this book the most, got a bit lost in the middle, and appreciated the touches of philosophy mixed into the science throughout. Reading this via audiobook was the right choice for me, and I enjoyed Benedict Cumberbatch's narration.

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting, consoling journey to discover the meaning of time 'We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come' Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe. With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. Enlightening and consoling, The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time -- and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves. Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

Jawahir M

Description Summary: A thought provoking book with fascinating concepts but which has a dizzying way of laying them out. Think The Theory of Everything except with more physics :).

Score: 3/5

The Order of Time is one of those books that sounds incredibly fascinating and when you pick up the book, you feel as if this is going to be the next literary revelation in our lifetime. Unfortunately due to my complete lack of background in physics, I had a really hard time understanding much. So what was supposed to look like clear chronological lines of reason turned into a clump of tangled wires.

The poor fellow though really tried to simplify things bless him; Rovelli even explicitly says  "...in the hope that I have not already lost all of my readers."  

Even he can admit the book is somewhat dizzying! However we must take note that time is a confusing and mysterious part of life, one that is beautifully strange yet alluring all the same. I did learn astonishing things in respect to time and the universe, it's one of those books that will make you sit on a bench on the park and just wonder at awe on how the universe is around you; like walking out of the cinema theatre after being sucked in another "world".

Despite the challenging difficulty in grasping the book, I liked the author's writing and the use of real life examples to illustrate the various notions of time. Furthermore, his use of graphics, pictures, and the multiple references that you can look at really provides a profound picture of time and the ideas that he's presenting.

Book Summary: Carlo Rovelli, quantum physicist, asks the question: "What is time exactly?". This spirals into a full fledged journey of science, philosophy, and art to look into the one element that simultaneously makes its presence known and unknown in our lives. The book is divided into 3 main parts.

Part 1 looks at a world with time. From there Rovelli goes against our main beliefs onto what we think we know and believe about time, and starts deconstructing these "facts" so that you can relearn time according to Rovelli's claims and research.

Part 2 looks at a world without time. After the deconstruction that has happened in part 1, Rovelli is able now to illustrate a timeless world on the blank canvas of our minds. Time gets more chaotic here, but that doesn't mean that the world makes any less sense.

Part 3 looks back at the sources of time. We've tasted the dish, seen how it's been put together, now Rovelli showcases us the ingredients that made it up. This is one of the most philosophical parts of the book, and where Rovelli looks at the more humane parts of time. Rovelli writes about death, our memories, our experiences, and all that makes us fragile and human. End of Summary.

I might probably reread this with my physics obsessed friend because I really want this to be an unforgettable book for me, and not one I struggled to go through only for it to slip through my memory like trails of water. 

I'll end the review with one of my favorite quotes from the book:

"And it seems to me that life, this brief life, is nothing other than this: the incessant cry of these emotions that drive us...Sometimes it is a cry of pain. Sometimes it is a song...And it is fine like this. We can close our eyes, rest. This all seems fair and beautiful to me. This is time."

Do I recommend? I would suggest having a slight understanding of psychics before reading this.

Ben Nathan

Fascinating and interesting, just not something I would call "riveting". I'm very glad I read it, but don't know if I could suggest it to most anyone (unless they really love the physics of time).

Jeremy Cote

I found the book to be quite enjoyable. I listened to the wonderful audiobook, read by Benedict Cumberbatch. It was a short and sweet book that let me reflect on the physics. I work in some (weakly) related fields, so it was nice to think about these things. If you enjoy fundamental physics, I would definitely recommend reading this book (or listening to it!).

Janna

Never thought I’d see the day where I complained that a book leaned too far into the poetic, but here we are. I liked Part One, which lays out the physics behind why time is not as it seems, but Part Two goes too much into philosophising without much of a sound basis and without adequately laying out the supporting physics. Where Reality Is Not What It Seems took readers through a series of logical steps, provided the appropriate rigour, and created a sound place from which to begin amping up the complexity, The Order of Time begins in science and then swerves the argument into flowery interpretations of thinkers from St Augustine to Kant to Buddha. 

His ultimate conclusion seems to be that our experience of time is something that depends on our human lens: something that philosophers have said for centuries (and he quotes those philosophers). In support of this in the physics side of things, he briefly explains the irreversibility of ever-increasing entropy and how the relations between particles are blurred such that we are unable to perceive them. "Therefore, our vision of the world is blurred because the physical interactions between the part of the world to which we belong and the rest are blind to many variables. ... This does not mean that blurring is a mental construct; it depends on actual, existing physical interactions." 

He then switches to philosophy and quotes Hans Reichenbach, writing that time causes anxiety; as a result, we have imagined the existence of eternity and heaven and higher realms. And from there he suggests: "Perhaps, ultimately, the emotional dimension of time is not the film of mist that prevents us from apprehending the nature of time objectively. Perhaps the emotion of time is precisely what time is for us." His foray into the emotions is rooted more in literature and music, which (knowing how poets think) can be hit or miss. My main issue, however, is this. There is a difference between (1) humans being constructed such that we are unable to perceive the reality of time and (2) the emotions that arise from our particular experience of time. Those emotions might well cause us to be attached to time or have an awareness of it that doesn't match reality. But that's not the same as saying that, as humans, the structure of our minds and the physical interactions of slice of the universe we occupy are such that we are unable to perceive temporal reality, which is what I took his argument to be. Emotions are far more like a mental construct than the blurring of thermodynamic interactions occurring in the physical world. And what he says about emotions seems to suggest that we refuse to see reality, not that we are unable to (one could imagine a person who wasn't caught up with anxiety about time and didn't experience those obscuring emotions). Maybe he wasn't trying to put forward a serious argument for the place of emotions or maybe I'm reading ungenerously. Perhaps he was simply swept up with the poetry of it all, but that leads to confusion and makes the entire text less credible.

I’m not a physicist and I know this is a pop science book — emphasis on the pop — but by the end it was a pop philosophy book sprinkled over with poetry and references to the likes of the Mahabharata, Bach, and the book of Job. The final chapter consists of his musings on what really drives us as human beings — and I do think it's all connected and that the final chapter drives at the point that really matters, but he didn't earn that ending. He didn't lay out the path correctly and, consequently, his broader conclusions on life feel flimsy. While physics and philosophy certainly have implications for one another, and there is truth also in art and poetry, The Order of Time does not result in a successful mix.

I.m. ruzz

A less than ideal topic for an audiobook but I stayed with it as best I could. It's dense. Very dense and when driving or performing other activities it's very easy to loose the thread. Some interesting thought throughout but I should have "read" it rather than listened.

Matthew Jackson &
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

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