The Order 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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2018–2026years
67% recommend31% neutral2% critical
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What Hacker News says
- A few years ago I thought through the concept of time and developed the fragile but persistent belief that time is a human invention and not a fundamental part of the natural world. It was a very unsettling experience, until Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time restored my sense of mental sanity. I’m currently rereading it because it made me an instant fanboy of Rovelli and this is one of his most tender books. The prose gently rocks you while delivering a complete shift in worldview.
- You might be interested in The Order of Time by Carlo Ravelli. Time and gravity are certainly linked, but from what I took away from the book (which is a lot to digest, even as non-mathy as it tries to be) is that Time is really heat. Heat moves only from hot to cold, dispersing in some entropic fashion as we move toward the final state of the universe, but in the meantime we can measure that time/heat "flows" at different rates, depending on how near or far you are from large bodies.
I likely need to reread it, though, as some of its ideas are a bit above my weight class when it comes to understanding physics. But, you may enjoy it!
- I strongly recommend reading Carlo Rovelli, starting with "The Order of Time"
- I must admit the foundation of the argument presented punches well above my understanding, but I recently read Carlo Rovelli's short work "The Order of Time" and found it wonderfully engaging and relatable.
- Carlo Rovelli - one of my favorite scientists alive - has a lot to say about this fascinating subject. Start with "The Order of Time", if you never read anything by him.
- I'm a fan of Carlo Rovelli's popular science books. "The Order of Time" in particular left a big impression on me. He is a philosopher as well as a scientist, and he has a gift for writing beautiful and accessible prose about some pretty heady topics.
If you are interested in RQM but find this article somewhat dry, check out his short book "Helgoland".
I find both RQM and Rovelli's notion of "thermal time" (i.e. the idea causality and entropy are emergent properties dependent on our perspective, as opposed to fundamental features of reality) to be very convincing.
