Time / No Time: The Paradox of Poetry and Physics

by Seán Haldane

Modern physics questions the absoluteness of time. Yet the cosmological theories of Mach, Einstein, and Barbour are no more testable, given the scale of the universe, than those of the first theoretical physicist, Parmenides, who was also a poet. He described how change cannot logically exist yet it observably exists. This kind of paradox is the stuff of poetry. Since the arrival of quantum physics it is the stuff of physics too. Perhaps physics can only advance, and poetry can only maintain what Thomas Hardy called its sustaining power if each is open to the thinking of the other. This book explores the findings of neuroscience as well as the experience of poets and physicists when faced with the paradox of Time / No Time.

186 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2012

About the author

Seán Haldane can hold three passports: British(he was born in Sussex, in 1943), Irish (through his father, and he grew up mainly in Northern Ireland), and Canadian (through a long period of residence , 1967-94, in Québec, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia). By ancestry he is something of a human compass: a quarter each English, German, Scottish and Irish.

He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, University College, Oxford (B.A., First Class Hons. in English) and Saybrook Institute, San Francisco (Ph.D.in Psychology). When he first found himself writing poetry he resolved never to make a living from it or by teaching it, and that any incidental earnings from poems would go towards publishing poetry by himself and others. He has worked as a lecturer, part time farmer, small press publisher, psychotherapist, consultant clinical neuropsychologist in the NHS and Canadian health services, and as an expert witness in criminal and civil cases. He lives in London where he has a part time practice in neuropsychology and psychotherapy supervision (See neuropsychology.sh) and does occasional neuropsychology supervision in the NHS. Since 2013 he has been publisher at Rún Press, Cork, Ireland, www.runepress.ie.

He is a competitive field archer.