The Arrow Of Time: A Voyage Through Science To Solve Time's Greatest Mystery [Paperback]

Roger Highfield (Author), Peter Coveney (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0449907236 | ISBN-13: 978-0449907238 | Publication Date: June 23, 1992 | Edition: 1st Td Ppbk Ed., 1st Print, Aug. 1992

In our century, the subject of time has become an area of serious inquiry for science. Theories that contain time as a simple quantity form the basis of our understanding of many scientific disciplines, yet the debate rages on: why does there seem to be a direction to time, an arrow of time pointing from past to future?

In The Arrow of Time, a major bestseller in England, Dr. Peter Coveney, a research scientist, and award-winning journalist Dr. Roger Highfield, demonstrate that the commonsense view of time agrees with the most advanced scientific theory. Time does in fact move like an arrow, shooting forward into what is genuinely unknown, leaving the past immutably behind. The authors make their case by exploring three centuries of science, offering bold reinterpretations of Newton's mechanics, Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and advancing the insights of James Gleick's Chaos.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The authors delve into physics, biology, mathematics and quantum mechanics in their complex, stimulating reinterpretation of the concept of time. Illustrated.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Not to be confused with Richard Morris's Time's Arrows ( LJ 3/15/85) and Stephen Jay Gould's Time's Arrows, Time's Cycles ( LJ 3/15/87), this is the first American edition of a book originally published in Great Britain. Coveney and Highfield--a scientist and journalist, respectively--demonstrate how the everyday perception that time moves in one direction is consistent with advanced scientific theory. At the center of their theory is an intriguing interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics, which describes the forces of entropy. The authors show that this concept has broad relevance in such fields as cosmology, evolution, and the emerging science of chaos. Not for the merely curious, this book cites Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time ( LJ 4/15/88) and James Gleick's Chaos ( LJ 8/87) and will appeal to readers with the relatively high level of scientific sophistication of those books. Generalists will find the aforementioned book by Morris to be more approachable.
- Gregg Sapp, Mon tana State Univ. Libs., Bozeman
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 377 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st Td Ppbk Ed., 1st Print, Aug. 1992 edition (June 23, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449907236
• ISBN-13: 978-0449907238
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #635,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Makes You Think, September 29, 2003

By 

Dr. W. G. Covington, Jr. (Edinboro, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Arrow of Time: A Voyage Through Science to Solve Time's Greatest Mystery (Hardcover)

In the acknowledgements we're told that the authors are seeking to bring the latest thinking on the arrow of time to a general audience and I would have to say they've generally succeeded in doing so. While some of the concepts may be challenging to some readers, I think they reach their goal of readability for a non-scientific readership. From the outset, they get right to the heart of their subject. They explain, "Uni-directional time, in fact, comes to appear as simply an illusion created in our minds. Frequently scientists who investigate this problem refer to our everyday sense of the flow of time, rather sneeringly as 'psychological time' or 'subjective time'" (p. 23). Contributions of the various cultures and individual scientists that have shaped our perception of time is traced chronologically (isn't that ironic) in this book. This book helps a thinker to question various assumptions and ponder if there is really a separation between past, present, and future.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Both accesssible to the public and interesting, April 29, 2007

By 

BernardZ (Melbourne, vic Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arrow of Time Pb (Flamingo) (Paperback)

I am fascinated by this subject and read much on it. The question is why does time go forward from the past to the future and not in the reverse direction. Our physics equations run as well in both directions and yet in life, we know that time runs only forward. We have no answer.

This book conclusion is that better mathematics will solve the answer. Something I doubt.

Anyway this book presents the facts to the reader in an easy to read format.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and thought provoking read., August 23, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Arrow Of Time: A Voyage Through Science To Solve Time's Greatest Mystery (Paperback)

While I agree that this book raises many questions that are in the end left relatively unanswered, it provides a wonderful introduction to relativity, quantum theory and chaos. It's definitely not the last word, but for anyone grounded in basic introduction level physics it's a wonderful next step. Most of all, this book is a fascinating read, it is well written and has a nice blending of scientific theories and historical anecdotes that makes it difficult to put down.