In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: heavenly clockwork, mental time travel, thermodynamic arrow, New York, Julius Caesar, New Year (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Beginning with a 5000-year-old tomb in Drogheda, Ireland, illuminated only at the winter solstice, science writer Falk asks the question,"What is time?... the stuff that flows... or a dimension, like space?" Falk (Universe on a T-Shirt) explores the origins of calendar time, from primitive astronomical observatories to the precision clocks of today. Though the movement of the heavens provided the basis for years, months, days and even the seven-day week, it wasn't until the Catholic Church needed to date important events like Easter that reconciling the lunar and solar calendars became a major concern; as such, the Church became "one of the strongest supporters of precision astronomy and timekeeping." Falk seamlessly combines science with literary and philosophical observations ("Chaucer had no notion of the length of a minute; Shakespeare did but nowhere does he mention the second") and digresses to fascinating topics like root notions of past and future, the vagaries of memory and the behavior of birds at breakfast time. Rounding out his multi-course feast, Falk contrasts Newton's notion of "absolute, true, and mathematical" time with Einstein's final words in 1955, "the distinction of past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion," to present modern speculations on black holes and the universe's future.
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Review

“Falk displays a deft touch with both temporal history and experimentation.” –Toronto Star

“In this thoroughly readable, broad-sweeping and thought-provoking book, Falk surveys humanity’s attempts to record and understand time, and poses some fascinating questions.” –New Scientist magazine

“An engaging writer who fearlessly tackles potentially brain-freezing topics.” –San Francisco Chronicle

"Falk's book is what Hawking's Brief History should have been."—Ottawa Citizen

“Dan Falk is a riveting writer: his latest book is almost unputdownable. He covers an eclectic range of fascinating topics—from prehistory to the far future. Time is a mysterious commodity: we gain, spend, save, and lose it. But everyone should make enough time to read In Search of Time.”—Martin J. Rees, author of Just Six Numbers and Our Final Hour

“Falk seamlessly combines science with literary and philosophical observations ('Chaucer had no notion of the length of a minute; Shakespeare did but nowhere does he mention the second') and digresses to fascinating topics like root notions of past and future, the vagaries of memory and the behavior of birds at breakfast time.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)

PRAISE FOR UNIVERSE ON A T-SHIRT:
“Mixing simple explanation and personal profiles with touches of philosophy and whimsy, T-Shirt gives a highly accessible introduction to some tough and important physics.” —American Scientist
“Crisply written, well researched.” —Sky & Telescope
“[Falk] has a wonderful gift for finding helpful analogies and for writing about science in a way that is accessible without sounding dumbed down.” —Booklist
“Falk endorses the idea that the best hope for a so-called theory of everything is in string theory, a difficult area of science that Falk nevertheless deftly unravels for the uninitiated.” —Science News
“Falk delivers a readable, entertaining, and fresh take on the subject.  Most significant, he has achieved something original: more cleverly and cleanly than anything I can recall reading, the book itself unifies the story of the search for unifying principles in science.” —The Globe and Mail

*starred review* Beginning with a 5000-year-old tomb in Drogheda, Ireland, illuminated only at the winter solstice, science writer Falk asks the question,"What is time?... the stuff that flows. [or] a dimension, like space?" Falk (Universe on a T-Shirt) explores the origins of calendar time, from primitive astronomical observatories to the precision clocks of today. Though the movement of the heavens provided the basis for years, months, days and even the seven-day week, it wasn''t until the Catholic Church needed to date important events like Easter that reconciling the lunar and solar calendars became a major concern; as such, the Church became "one of the strongest supporters of precision astronomy and timekeeping." Falk seamlessly combines science with literary and philosophical observations ("Chaucer had no notion of the length of a minute; Shakespeare did but nowhere does he mention the second") and digresses to fascinating topics like root notions of past and future, the vagaries of memory and the behavior of birds at breakfast time. Rounding out his multi-course feast, Falk contrasts Newton's notion of "[a]bsolute, true, and mathematical" time with Einstein's final words in 1955, "the distinction of past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion," to present modern speculations on black holes and the universe''s future. (Oct.) (Publishers Weekly )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (November 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031237478X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312374785
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #83,577 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs more time, December 27, 2008

By	Peter FYFE (Erskineville, Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Join Dan Falk for a bus tour of all the major tourist spots of science history where time played an important role. After exploring the history of time and its measurement, you'll enjoy the impressive views of all the big names (Newton, Einstein etc), and stop to chat with some contemporary players in the scientific fields that play with notions of time.

The book's weakness is the same as that of the science it surveys: we spend a lot of time exploring what we do with time as a concept (its epistemologies) but don't really explore what time really is (ontologically or phenomenologically). There are some brief and dismissive philosophical side-bars but it's clear the author is out of his depth when wrestling with the philosophy behind the science and the interpretation of the science. For example, he claims the measurability of time dilation is proof of time travel to the future, which it isn't - it's just slower travel through now; his juvenile single-sentence dismissal of "presentism" is indicative of the philosophical rigour.

None of this takes away from the enjoyable and highly readable text and if you don't want to go deep into time, this is a tour worth taking.

I must mention the deplorable state of the typesetting and layout, which frequently justifies single words over whole lines and in some places actually cuts off the footnotes mid sentence. Either the publisher's software is buggy or they don't know how to use it, which makes for a visually bumpy ride .

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you're interested in one of the fundamental questions of nature, this book is for you, January 18, 2009

By	Gran Lector (Denver, USA) - See all my reviews

In this book, Mr. Falk gives the reader a broad survey of current and ancient thinking about a question that has vexed humanity since the beginning: what is the nature of time? One of the difficulties with the question is that we don't even have a universally accepted definition of what time actually "is". For most of recorded history the topic of time was the domain of philosphy and physics. Mr. Falk walks the reader through the main philosophical theories about time and then shows how Isaac Newton decisively brought time into the grip of physical science. A couple of centuries later, Einstein overthrew some of our misconceptions about time and showed that time, like space, is not absolute but relative. Mr. Falk explains some of the key conclusions of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity in a way that a general reader can easily follow. In more recent times, Mr. Falk informs us, psychologists and cognitive scientists have begun tackling the subject of time as they systematically probe the nature of the human mind. By the way, the mind and the nature of consciousness is another 'little' subject that will continue to defy us for the forseable future. In addition to the philosophical and scientific theories about time, the book also covers cultural and sociological aspects of how humans deal with time. The language and diction of book are of high caliber.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless..., March 9, 2009

By	Steve Reina (Troy Michigan) - See all my reviews

Part everything you ever wanted to know, part up to the minute (no pun intended) survey of the latest science, this book is one of those easy to read, accessible 200 or so page scientific tomes that so seem to dominate science bookshelves.

But it's also a wonderful one volume treatment of its intended topic, right up there with About Time by Paul Davies and Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.

In brief this book treats the various arrows of time from the one we psychologically perceive right down to the one at the subatomic level.

Though Falk's treatment of the history of time and how we got the sixty minute hour is fascinating (thank the Babylonians he says), I think this book is at best discussing the cutting edge science.

And in terms of the cutting edge science it all boils down to one question: Is Julius Caesar still alive?

Though the gut answer is that Caesar is long dead such a view runs contrary to modern science which says that mathematics provides no justification for saying that any one time in time is more preferred than another.

In this way, Caesar's apparent death is merely "a stubbornly persistent illusion" as Einstein would put it. And as Newton puts it (who still remains a special case of Einstein) gravity reduces its grip as part of a straight forward inverse square calculation.

The big deal: If we were really living in a four dimensional world, gravity would reduces its grip as part of an inverse cube calculation...a mathematical proof the passage of time that seems so obvious to us is merely a human generated illusion.

In this way, our perception of the passage of time is like the deliciousness of steak or the pleasant smell of flowers...a user illusion put their (albeit for good evolutionary reasons) by our consciousness.

Whether you agree with all this or not (I personally think both Caesar and Elvis are dead) it still remains fascinating reading and an interesting take on a topic we all too easily can take for granted.

For those time fans who've read this book as well the previous Kaku and Davies entries, I would also suggest The End of Time by Julian Barbour, the Time Machine by H.G. Wells both mentioned by this author and for the ambitious the Fifth Edition of the Physical Basis for the Direction of Time by Dieter Zee.