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“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, 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.
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RIVERHEAD BOOKS An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 Published by Riverhead Books 2018 Copyright © 2017 by Adelphi Edizioni SPA, Milano Translation copyright © 2018 by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre First published in Italy by Adelphi Edizioni SPA under the title L’ordine del tempo 2017 English translation published simultaneously in Great Britain by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK and in the United States of America by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rovelli, Carlo, author. | Segre, Erica, translator. | Carnell, Simon, translator. Title: The order of time / Carlo Rovelli ; translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell. Other titles: Ordine del tempo. English Description: First American edition. | New York : Riverhead Books, 2018. | Originally published in Italian: L’ordine del tempo (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 2017). | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017060293 | ISBN 9780735216105 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735216129 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Space and time. | Time. | Presentism (Philosophy). | Cosmology. Classification: LCC QC173.59.S65 R6813 2018 | DDC 530.11—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060293 p. cm. Version_1
FOR ERNESTO, BILO, AND EDOARDO
CONTENTS
Title Page Copyright Dedication Author's Note Perhaps Time Is the Greatest Mystery Part I THE CRUMBLING OF TIME 1. Loss of Unity 2. Loss of Direction 3. The End of the Present 4. Loss of Independence 5. Quanta of Time Part II THE WORLD WITHOUT TIME 6. The World Is Made of Events, Not Things 7. The Inadequacy of Grammar 8. Dynamics as Relation Part III THE SOURCES OF TIME 9. Time Is Ignorance 10. Perspective 11. What Emerges from a Particularity 12. The Scent of the Madeleine 13. The Source of Time The Sister of Sleep Image