The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time
| File:The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time - bookcover.jpg
Hardcover edition
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| Author | Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Physics, cosmology, philosophy of time |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
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Publication date
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December 8, 2014 |
| Media type | |
| 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 American theoretical physicist Lee Smolin and 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
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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:
- A New Refutation of Time (1946) by Jorge Luis Borges
- Philosophical Problems of Space and Time (1963) Adolf Grünbaum
- Time Reborn (2013) by Lee Smolin
- The Unreality of Time (1908) by J. M. E. McTaggart
References
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