The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Take two. Time has swallowed my review. My first one anyway.

I wish I could take back the time, do it over, but entropy hit GR (or at least my internet connection) and something less than the total heat-death of the universe made me realign my perceptions of reality and time.

Oh, wait. That was this book!

Half historical science, some equations, the theoretical underpinnings of quantum loop theory, the role of entropy and heat in the determination of what makes TIME, and half philosophy and what makes our consciousness drag together all the underpinnings of the blur we call reality.

Together, this is physics and metaphysics. The Greeks got it pretty damn close, but then, so did St. Augustine and Heidegger and Kant. Is it all relative? Yep. Thank you, Einstein. Every point on the curve of our universe has its own particular Time. Now is meaningless since the relationship between every point can never intersect with the others. It's all past or future and THAT is all perception. Time is change, too, and not to put too fine a point on it, all we can really do is put a rate on it, never carve it up into its smallest particle.

So what about consciousness? It's all interpretation of what we see, baby. The stratifications of what we work by are just an approximation and it says nothing about how a child sees a day versus how an old person sees it.

Carlo Rovelli combines the two and does an admirable job of trying to reconcile it all.

Impossible, you say? Possibly, but he also gets 9 out of 10 points for style. :) Beautifully written.


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