Timeless Reality : Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes

by Victor J. Stenger

Quantum physics has many extraordinary implications. One of the most extraordinary is that events at the atomic and subatomic level seem to depend on the future as well as the past. Is time really reversible?Physicist Victor J. Stenger says yes. Contrary to our most basic assumptions about the inevitable flow of time from past to future, the underlying reality of all phenomena may have no beginning and no end, and not be governed by an "arrow of time." Though aware of the possibility, physicists have generally been reluctant to accept the reversibility of time as reality because of the implied causal If time travel to the past were possible, then you could go back and kill your grandfather before he met your grandmother! However, Stenger shows that this paradox does not apply for quantum phenomena.Many people believe that the laws of nature represent a deep, Platonic reality that goes beyond the material objects that are observed by eye and by advanced scientific instruments. Stenger maintains that reality may be simpler and less mysterious than most think. The quantum world only appears mysterious when forced to obey rules of everyday human experience. Stenger convincingly argues that, based on established principles of simplicity and symmetry, at its deepest level reality is literally timeless. Within this reality it is possible that many universes exist with different structures and laws from our own.Stenger elucidates these complex subjects with great clarity and many helpful illustrations in a fascinating book that is understandable to the educated lay reader.

Genres: Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Physics

396 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2000

About the author

Victor John Stenger was an American particle physicist, outspoken atheist and author, active in philosophy and popular religious skepticism.

He published 13 books for general audiences on physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, philosophy, religion, atheism, and pseudoscience. He popularized the phrase "Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings".

Reviews

[LS · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has taken me two years to finish this book. Why? Because the author's attitude grates on me in the most excruciating way. Sure it contains some pithy summaries of other books in the canon on the nature of time and some novel gems about time, yet between these islands lay such a morass of extraneous stuff that the author even managed to express his dislike of political correctness within the context of a science book on the subject of time.(!) Was the torture worth the gems? Well, it was sort of like a getting a root canal at the site of one tooth, fortunately I only have to experience it once.

[John Grange · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the read in it's totality, and the subject matter was edifying and endlessly fascinating, too many chapters meandered into the overly esoteric. Some of it by necessity in a book of this nature, however too much, in my opinion, was unnecessary and took away from the experience.

[Voyt · Rating 3 out of 5]

POSTED BY ME AT AMAZON 2004
I like certain Victor Stenger's books. Who possibly can be better in presenting such subjects of science? After all, author is a professor of psychology as well. As Bertrand Russell wrote in 1950: "philosophy aims at a theoretical understanding of the structure of the world: on the other hand, it tries to discover and inculcate the best possible way of life..it can give to the individual a just measure of himself in relation to the whole history of man and to the astronomical cosmos". "Timeless Reality" is absolutely a "meisterstuck" dedicated to reader who is not afraid of mathematical formulas and equations. Learn from professor Stenger about time symmetry solving mysteries of quantum double nature and that cause not always precedes effect. Find more: brief history of philosophy, every topic of modern particle physics related to cosmology - explained and repeated each time when needed. If you have not found easy and convincing explanation of EPR paradox so far, you will find it here, one of the most interesting! Large sections of "Timeless Reality" successfully navigate through this hazy subject! Yes, it is a popular science book at its best, loaded with names, properties and behaviors of many exotic particles. Estimated level of difficulty rests somewhere between Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" (quantum theory content) and Alan Guth's "The Inflationary Universe" or Lee Smolin's "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity".