Re: SUO: Non-existance of Time - a new book
Hi,
For a brief intro or summary of Barbour's notions at a rather superficial,
popular level, there's an article in the December 2000 issue of Discover
magazine. Undoubtedly this is a gentler and cheaper introduction than the
book, so it might be worth reading first.
However, I don't see how such wildly counterintuitive concepts (though
possibly more correct than today's theories of the nature of the universe)
are directly applicable to the construction of ontologies that purport to
structure human-like knowledge of the nature and behavior of our world. As
it is, simple relativistic and quantum phenomena are not evident as such at
the human scale of perception and motion.
While Barbour's work may hold or lead to the integration of quantum and
relativistic descriptions, it still won't change human perception and
comprehension of the physical world. Thus, aside from those ontologizing
physics knowledge itself, I can't see that this work has more than
intellectual curiosity value to the SUO community.
Randall Schulz
Mountain View, CA USA
At 17:43 2001-05-18, you wrote:
>I just came across an article about an interesting new book about
>physics and time.
>
>"In this highly provocative volume, Barbour presents the basic evidence for
>the nonexistence of time, explaining what a timeless universe is like and
>showing how the world will nonetheless be experienced as intensely temporal.
>It is a book that strikes at the heart of modern physics, that casts doubt
>on Einstein's greatest contribution, the space-time continuum, but that also
>points to the solution of one of the greatest paradoxes of modern science:
>the chasm between classical and quantum physics. Indeed, Barbour argues that
>the unification of Einstein's general relativity and quantum mechanics may
>well spell the end of time--time will cease to have a role in the
>foundations of physics."
>
>http://www.platonia.com/