Customer Reviews

Timeless Reality : Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First of all, I'd like to start with a caveat. I gave this book 5 stars, but that assumes the reader has a college education or a very technical background. For someone not used to college-level writing, I would recommend avoiding this book. Having said that, I thought this book was amazing. My head is still spinning from all the detailed, technical information about quantum physics and relativity. Without getting bogged down in the actual mathematics, this book tells you just about everything you might want to know about modern physics.

Some of the best and most original writing is actually at the end, where Stenger presents his ideas on symmetry and how it relates to cosmology and the history of the universe. However, everything else in the book leads up to this, and there are plenty of references to previous chapters.

Stenger's concluding paradigm is simple, logical, and aesthetic, and definitely meets his own criterion of parsimony, or Occam's razor. Parsimony is a common theme in this and Stenger's other books, and he does a great job of using it to critique and analyze the various theories and philosophical interpretations of modern physics.

Again, I would recommend this book to anyone comfortable with college-level reading, but I would also love to see Stenger's concluding ideas summarized in another, less technical and more accessible format, for a wider audience.

I simply love Victor Stenger's books and lecturing. 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 find 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".

I approve of the non-mathematical descriptions this book offers the intended audience. It elucidates some important quantitative principles in a comprehensible language (e.g. the Principle of Least Action; the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian; the 'Wave-Particle Duality' and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle; state vectors, phase, superposition, Gauge Invariance, Relativity symmetry, spin, and Lorentz transformations). I have enjoyed using this book as part of a bridge to step across the yawning gulf between popular (non-mathematical) and rigorously quantitative textbooks on Quantum theory (Quantum Electrodynamics & Quantum Field Theory). I especially liked Chapter 7 'Taming Infinity' where the Feynman-Wheeler Interaction Theory and Feynman's QED are beautifully presented for intellectual consumption. He seems especially aligned with Feynman's views of the particle nature of matter.
The author has carefully placed key words in bold type throughout the book that indicate their inclusion in a generous glossary of terms near the end of the book. I have grown to appreciate this as is a valuable feature in several books at this reading level. The chapters are broken into intellectually digestible size with a fair amount of diagrams to illustrate certain concepts visually.
Apparently a part of his agenda in this book, as well as in several of his other publications, is to try to correct (control) superstitious creationist (wrong) thinking concerning the origin of our Universe and equally incorrect mystical interpretations of reality. Vic flat out states that the Universe '...had no beginning and was not created.' For example, Dr. Stenger seems compelled to narrowly target the logic of theistic physicists such as Polkinghorne and Ross. In addition, he seems to be inclined to marginalize the fact that particles are a manifestation of force field excitations/waves in a quantum field description of the phenomena in our Universe. After carefully reading his book (with sincere & open-minded interest) I have come to strongly suspect that he fears an association of 'spooky action at a distance' (i.e. fields & waves) with a an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and eternal (timeless) Supreme Being who, God forbid, might have created everything (including the laws of physics). He also goes after the philosophical interpretation of QM that speculates that reality is mystically created or changed by observation & measurement. One has to wonder if maybe the author might have had some kind of traumatic religious disenchantment in his earlier travels through life that subsequently motivates him to prove that God doesn't exist. I would like to point out that I once had a bout of serious religious disillusionment from which I recovered to a simple & humble attitude and outlook towards a theological ontology of reality that is in harmony with, indeed even embraces, physical reality as we understand it from a scientific perspective. It's possible to do this and not risk your intelligence, reasonability, sanity, and objectivity towards reality. I may be projecting something that isn't really there with this guy so I apologize if that's the case. Honestly I have to confess that I don't know (for sure) what motivates this man as I cannot read his mind. I can, however, surmise from what he has written that he finds the possibility of a spiritual realm untenable. Well, live & let live right?
It must be noted that one of his major points in this book is we exist in a (bi-directional) time symmetric Universe that may be one of many in the 'Multiverse'. This is most interesting and would make a book in itself without all the other anti-superstitious stuff. I believe that he could have left his arguments against the creative design of the Universe in (a revised version of?) his other book 'The Unconscious Quantum' to keep this particular book more focused towards the subjects of the sub-title: 'Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes'. Ironically, his arguments for a timeless reality reinforce my view of an eternal Spirit whom I believe is responsible for, and continues to sustain, more than we can ever achieve in defining the reality he has created. I choose to call this Spirit God. Well now you know my perspective. I like to try to keep an open mind. If I'm wrong, and I very well might be, then I haven't lost anything, just a little mental time in a timeless universe.
All this said I hope you don't get the wrong impression of my respect towards what Mr. Stenger has done with this great book. He has challenged us to be freethinking skeptics and to recognize the hocus-pocus philosophical fluff that is frequently published in the mystical/speculative interpretations concerning the nature of reality at the quantum level. I loved the book because the majority of it lent itself as a great reference to introductory Quantum Mechanics. His writing is succinct (no fluff), objective and didactic. I recommend "Timeless Reality" to anyone (theistic or otherwise) interested in exploring the deeply mysterious and equally edifying adventure of Quantum Reality. I hope this comes out in paperback so that more can benefit from it as I have. My sincere appreciation goes out to this author. Thanks Vic!
Ciao,
IndiAndy

...

The author takes the reader from basic concepts into the world of physics where I have never been before. It is not a book to take to the park to feed the birds. It, at least for me, requires concentration, energy and a love of anticipating the next step in how things came to be and why we think it so. I ordered five more related books as a result. What fun to be so challenged.

i am reading this and the shape of inner space at the same time and i must say i am enjoying timeless reality far more. Stenger argues from an almost philosophical perspective which is completely grounded in experimental physics-as opposed to theoretical physics-that is unrivaled in simplicity and conciseness. The only other book that has produced as many eureka moments as STenger's book has produced for me is an inquiry on human nature-by David Hume- which leads me to believe that if one wishes to study philosophy, one must understand the logically induced patterns of the universe. And for this i find Stenger's book to be a wonderful introduction.

This is yet another 'just so' story explaining why the universe is not unique and appears to fail on all technical counts.

Examples -
-"information is negative entropy"? They are not even the same units and even correcting for that, information in communication theory is a state function difference. This perpetuates the widespread confusion of correlating disorder with thermodynamics.

-"I propose that the big bang was not the beginning of the universe, nor the beginning of time."? But he doesn't suggest there wasn't one, just before 'inflation' from the false vacuum! Good luck if that's not a starting point!

Stenger also adopts a popular misconception that inflation (the early exponential expansion of the universe) causes the direction of time. Paul Davies lost this argument decades ago to Don Page in a science journal debate, by ignoring gravity. Stenger thinks he has it solved with a simple black hole argument-
"The initial entropy of the universe was also as large as it could have been, since it was also the entropy of a black hole. Thus, the universe has maximum entropy at the two extremes on the time axis. In each case, the universe is in equilibrium. At each time, the universe is in a static state of total chaos. This is a point that has been missed by almost everyone, including Penrose." [Referring to his earlier book The Emperor's New Mind.]

In Penrose's recent book, The Road to Reality, wherein he explains in detail why the universe is not simple, he also lays waste to Stenger's attack -
"Now let us return to the extraordinary 'specialness' of the Big Bang. The fact that it must have had as absurdly low entropy is already evident from the mere existence of the Second Law of thermodynamics. But low entropy can take many different forms. We want to understand the particular way in which our universe was initially special...
It seems to me that this apparent thermal equilibrium in the early universe has grossly misled some cosmologists into thinking that the Big Bang was somehow high entropy 'random' (i.e. thermal) state, despite the fact that, because of the second law, it must have actually been a very organized (i.e. low entropy) state. A prevalent view seems to have been that the resolution of this paradox must lie in the fact that, soon after the Big Bang, the universe was 'small' so that comparatively few degrees of freedom were available to it, giving a low 'ceiling' to possible entropies. This point of view is fallacious, however, as was pointed out [earlier]. The correct resolution of the apparent paradox lies in the fact that the gravitational degrees of freedom have not been thermalized along with all of those matter and electromagnetic degrees of freedom...In fact, these gravitational degrees of freedom -providing a huge reservoir of entropy -are frequently not take into account at all...Rather than sharing in the thermalization that, in the early universe, applies to all other fields, gravity remains aloof, its degrees of freedom lying in wait, so that the second law would come into play as these degrees of freedom begin to become taken up. Not only does this give us a Second Law, but it gives us one in the particular form that we observe in nature. Gravity just seems to have been different!...physicists have tried to come to terms with this puzzle and related ones, concerning the origin of the universe. In my opinion, none of these attempts comes at all close to dealing with the puzzle..."