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  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time
  • Cited by 52
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2014
Print publication year:
2014
Online ISBN:
9781139696487
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139696487
Subjects:
Physics and Astronomy, Philosophy of Science, History, Philosophy and Foundations of Physics, Philosophy
Information

Book description

Cosmology is in crisis. The more we discover, the more puzzling the universe appears to be. How and why are the laws of nature what they are? A philosopher and a physicist, world-renowned for their radical ideas in their fields, argue for a revolution. To keep cosmology scientific, we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve. Then we can hope to explain them. The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin propose relies on three central ideas. There is only one universe at a time. Time is real: everything in the structure and regularities of nature changes sooner or later. Mathematics, which has trouble with time, is not the oracle of nature and the prophet of science; it is simply a tool with great power and immense limitations. The argument is readily accessible to non-scientists as well as to the physicists and cosmologists whom it challenges.

Awards

Winner, 2016 PROSE Award for Cosmology and Astronomy

Reviews

'It might be one of the most important books of our time … Right or wrong, this book is an event.'

Bryan Appleyard Source: The Sunday Times

'A hefty explication setting out clear agendas for research into quantum foundations, explanations for the 'arrow of time' and other parts of this puzzle.'

Source: Nature

'Any serious intellectual rebellion is worth watching. This one is ambitious: it seeks to root out one of the oldest impulses in the western imagination.'

Source: The Spectator

'Is time, after all, real? Two mavericks take an axe to the established theories of cosmology.'

Source: The Guardian

'… an admirable restatement of cosmological ambition.'

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

'Anyone that wants to thoroughly deliberate over the question of cosmology should read this book.'

Peter Eisenhardt Source: translated from Physik Journal

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Contents

Contents
  • 1 - The science of the one universe in time
    pp 5-45
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