Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

A thought-provoking subject presented with none of the sense of wonder and awe it deserves. In the hands of a Gribbin, Asimov or Davies this subject - and the authors' conclusions - could have been fascinating. Here, it is so dryly treated that making it through the book is hard work. No fun here.

I am interested in the topic but I was quite disappointed by the book. The main question: is there an arrow of time on a fundamental level is not properly discussed and the authors just repeat: "there has to be" without giving any convincing arguments. The book is badly written and does not argue clearly. No comparison with "Schroedinger's cat"

I just finished slogging through this book. It was not much fun, and neither was it terribly enlightening.
I found the writing style to be rather turgid; there was no ability to enliven the reader's appreciation of the subject by conveying a sense of enthusiasm. Instead, the style was too academic, and tended to focus endlessly on the work of the Brussels school, led by Ilya Prigogine (who won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium). Prigogine was mentioned so many times that it became annoying, regardless of how well one might regard Prigogine and his work.

The book contains many interesting topics, including lots of examples of dissipative, irreversible systems in chemistry and biology and beyond. However, the writing made these topics less interesting than they should have been, and it was by no means clear how such dissipative, irreversible systems could explain why the arrow of time flows (points?) in one direction only. It seems more likely that they provide yet more evidence that it does, but shed little light on why.

The book jacket says "... Picking up where Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" left off, ... ". I guess they were trying to ride the coat-tails of Hawking's deservedly very successful and delightful book. Don't be fooled; this book is a very different animal indeed.

I found a review of this book at [...], and have to agree with the reviewer's conclusions -- not positive. Apparently, the authors replied to the review, but their reply is hidden behind the Nature web site, which requires a login to view the material.

Ilya Prigogine (who died in 2003) wrote a foreword for the book, in which he is quoted: "I warmly welcome this book, which is written on a high scientific level while being accessible to a wide public." I beg to differ; the book is not very accessible at all. I really had to work hard and grit my teeth to get through it, and I have a Ph.D. in Physics. A truly lay reader would likely have more difficulty.

Recently, I have been reading a lot of books about the latest discoveries in Physics and Cosmology (and the history of these discoveries, back to Galileo and beyond). There are many interesting and engaging books on these subjects. This is not one of them. The sad truth is that this book could have been (and should have been!) so much better.

I just finished reading the book "The Arrow of Time -- The Quest to Solve Science's Greatest Mystery" by Peter Coveney & Roger Highfield (ISBN 0-00-654462-2). It was quite the slog. I also found it someone too gushy about certain people's work while dissin' the work of others. It also tended to ramble and was often unfocussed in its attempt to communicate -- it really seemed like they were more interested in making sure that all the great research they did got into the book than getting to the point. It was also a mix of historical anecdotes and information on the actual topic at hand, again, like they really, really wanted to make sure that everything they found out made it into the book. The book would have benefitted greatly from a good editor. For the most part, it didn't really help me understand any of the concepts they were on about (either I knew them already and their explanations didn't add to my knowledge, their explanations were muddled, or they really didn't have any answers on certain topics and just presented a series of disconnected "facts" and hoped that the reader could make sense out of what it meant). But the one area where the book really did further my knowledge and understanding was in its explanation of "chaos theory" and its application to the Second Law of Thermodynamics to predict that as open systems in far-from-equilibrium states ran their course, that order could spontaneously emerge. This phenomenon, of statistical (almost Heisenbergian uncertainty) behaviour in classical systems (systems as simple as two or three billiard balls on a perfect, frictionless, pool table with perfect bumpers), demonstrates that time-reversability can only exist for systems that are stupidly simple (quantum physics, Newtonian mechanics, relativity, etc.), and that as soon as you have any form of complexity, the predictive power of these theories has to be done statistically and is not purely deterministic any more. I guess what I got from the book is an appreciation for all the foofera about chaos and complexity theories... something that had me somewhat puzzled before. I do think I can apply these ideas to the work I'm doing, so it wasn't a waste of time, and it did put me to sleep very quickly on those nights where I was tossing and turning.

OK, so bits of it drag. But overall, where else are you going to get such an amazing trawl across the science of time. A great package and it is great to see the same team do something similar with Frontiers of Complexity.

If you have been troubled by the common-sense impossibility of such things as non-interactive detection of sub-atomic particles, backwards causality, the two-slit experiment, or just want to know what IS the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum physics, this book will provide real help. Good backgound reading, and some challenging problems concerning the nature of time, such as temporal asymmetry, are provided in clear readeable prose. Definately a good buy.

This is a brilliant piece of work for anyone interested in the "forgotten dimension" and just happens to double as a great history of science as well. I thouroughly recommend this intelligent work.