19 January, 2018

Time Reborn by Lee Smolin


A very interesting look at the crisis in physics by Smolin


I've been reading a great book by Lee Smolin entitled Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe. In it Smolin seems to reject the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and contemporary physics generally, for very similar philosophical reasons to myself.

This quote from a book review by The Guardian seems to sum his position up rather neatly:

the reason physicists have come to reject the reality of time is that they have been bewitched by the beauty and success of the mathematical models they use into mistaking those models for reality. For timelessness, though not really a feature of our world, is a feature of mathematics...
and

To think like this, Smolin claims, is to forget, or to deny, that the objects of mathematics – numbers, curves etc – do not exist, whereas physics concerns itself with what does exist, and, in reality, in the domain of things that do exist, time is inescapable.

Very interesting stuff. More to follow on this soon...



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