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The End Of Time (book)
''The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe'', also sold with the alternate subtitle ''The Next Revolution in Physics'', is a 1999 popular science book in which the author Julian Barbour argues that time exists merely as an illusion. Autobiography The book begins by describing how Barbour's view of time evolved. After taking physics in graduate school, Barbour went to Cologne for Ph.D. work on Einstein's theory of gravity. However he became preoccupied with the idea proposed by Ernst Mach that time is nothing but change. A remark by Paul Dirac prompted him to reconsider some mainstream physical assumptions. He worked as a translator of Russian scientific articles and remained outside of academic institutions which provided him time to pursue his research as he desired. For some twenty years Barbour sought to reformulate physics in the spirit of Mach but found that his results have been already discovered in a different form called ADM formalism. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian Barbour
Julian Barbour (; born 1937) is a British physicist with research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science. Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University of Cologne in 1968, Barbour has supported himself and his family without an academic position, working part-time as a translator (although he has an Oxford University email address and his research has been funded, for example by a FQXi grant). He resides near Banbury, England. Timeless physics His 1999 book '' The End of Time'' advances timeless physics: the controversial view that time, as we perceive it, does not exist as anything other than an illusion, and that a number of problems in physical theory arise from assuming that it does exist. He argues that we have no evidence of the past other than our memory of it, and no evidence of the future other than our belief in it. "Difference merely creates an illusion of time, with each indiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stream Of Consciousness (psychology)
The metaphor "stream of consciousness" suggests how thoughts seem to flow through the conscious mind. Research studies have shown that humans only experience one mental event at a time, as a fast-moving ''mind-stream''. The full range of thoughts one can be aware of forms the content of this "stream". The term was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855, when he wrote in '' The Senses and the Intellect'', "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness (on the same cerebral highway) enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense". But the man who popularized it is commonly credited instead: William James, often considered the father of American psychology, used it in 1890 in '' The Principles of Psychology.'' Buddhism Early Buddhist scriptures describe the "stream of consciousness" (Pali; ''viññāna-sota'') where it is referred to as the Mindstream. The practice of mindfulness, which is about being aware m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld and Nigel Nicolson founded Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1949 with a reception at Brown's Hotel, London. Among many other significant books, it published Vladimir Nabokov's ''Lolita'' (1959) and Nicolson's '' Portrait of a Marriage'' (1973), a frank biography of his mother Vita Sackville-West and father Harold Nicolson. In its early years Weidenfeld also published nonfiction works by Isaiah Berlin, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and Rose Macaulay, and novels by Mary McCarthy and Saul Bellow. Later it published titles by world leaders and historians, along with contemporary fiction and glossy illustrated books. Weidenfeld & Nicolson acquired the publisher Arthur Baker Ltd in 1959, and ran it as an imprint into the 1990s. Weidenfeld was one of Orion's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FQXi
The Foundational Questions Institute, styled FQxI (formerly FQXi), is an organization that provides grants to "catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology." It was founded in 2005 by cosmologists Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre. It is currently run by chief scientific officer David Sloan and chief operating officer Kavita Rajanna. Best known for itZenith Grantsprogram, FQxI has awarded 234 grants in ten grant rounds since 2006, totaling $27M. Sample grant round topics include the Nature of Time (2010), Physics of Information (2013), Physics of the Observer (2016), Agency in the Physical World (2018), and Information as Fuel (2019). It also runs frequent essay contests open to the general public with $40,000 in prizes awarded by a jury panel and the best texts published in book format. FQxI is an independent, philanthropically funded non-profit organization, run by scientists for scientists. FQxI has been funded by a variet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Being
Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one does not know whether the entity exists. Ontology is the philosophical discipline studying the nature and types of existence. Singular existence is the existence of individual entities while general existence refers to the existence of concepts or universals. Entities present in space and time have concrete existence in contrast to abstract entities, like numbers and sets. Other distinctions are between possible, contingent, and necessary existence and between physical and mental existence. The common view is that an entity either exists or not with nothing in between, but some philosophers say that there are degrees of existence, meaning that some entities exist to a higher degree than others. The orthodox position in ontology is t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Becoming (philosophy)
Becoming is a basic concept of dialectics that describes the processual nature of the world, the emergence and decay of essences, things and states. In contrast to change, becoming describes an event that develops from itself. Starting from this concept, philosophical thinking attempts to interpret processuality and changeability. The word “becoming” is a substantive verb. The concept of becoming is a fundamental category of metaphysics. While the opposite term “ being” in the absolute sense refers to a permanence, a stability in time, becoming refers to a progressive change of what sometimes is not and then is again, through a change in its attributes. Philosophy Greek antiquity Parmenides and Heraclitus In ancient philosophy, Heraclitus (* around 520 - around 460 BC) was already concerned with the question of becoming ( panta rhei). According to Heraclitus, everything in the world is constantly changing, i.e. nothing remains as it was, everything is constan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wave Function
In quantum physics, a wave function (or wavefunction) is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. The most common symbols for a wave function are the Greek letters and (lower-case and capital psi (letter), psi, respectively). Wave functions are complex number, complex-valued. For example, a wave function might assign a complex number to each point in a region of space. The Born rule provides the means to turn these complex probability amplitudes into actual probabilities. In one common form, it says that the squared modulus of a wave function that depends upon position is the probability density function, probability density of measurement in quantum mechanics, measuring a particle as being at a given place. The integral of a wavefunction's squared modulus over all the system's degrees of freedom must be equal to 1, a condition called ''normalization''. Since the wave function is complex-valued, only its relative phase and relative magnitud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wheeler–DeWitt Equation
The Wheeler–DeWitt equation for theoretical physics and applied mathematics, is a field equation attributed to John Archibald Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt. The equation attempts to mathematically combine the ideas of quantum mechanics and general relativity, a step towards a theory of quantum gravity. In this approach, time plays a role different from what it does in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, leading to the so-called " problem of time". More specifically, the equation describes the quantum version of the Hamiltonian constraint using metric variables. Its commutation relations with the diffeomorphism constraints generate the Bergman–Komar "group" (which ''is'' the diffeomorphism group on-shell). Motivation and background In canonical gravity, spacetime is foliated into spacelike submanifolds. The three-metric (i.e., metric on the hypersurface) is \gamma_ and given by g_\,\mathrmx^\,\mathrmx^\nu = (-N^2 + \beta_k\beta^k)\,\mathrmt^2 + 2\beta_k\,\mathrmx^k\,\ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Many-worlds Theory
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse. This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in different "worlds". The evolution of reality as a whole in MWI is rigidly deterministic and local. Many-worlds is also called the relative state formulation or the Everett interpretation, after physicist Hugh Everett, who first proposed it in 1957.Hugh Everettbr>Theory of the Universal Wavefunction Thesis, Princeton University, (1956, 1973), pp. 1–140. Bryce DeWitt popularized the formulation and named it ''many-worlds'' in the 1970s. See also Cecile M. DeWitt, John A. Wheeler (eds,) The Everett–Wheeler Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, ''Battelle Rencontres: 1967 Lectures in Mathematics and Physics'' (1968).Bryce Seligman DeWitt, The Many-Universes Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, ''Pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space-time
In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three-dimensional space, three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum (measurement), continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing and understanding Special relativity, relativistic effects, such as how different observers perceive ''where'' and ''when'' events occur. Until the turn of the 20th century, the assumption had been that the three-dimensional geometry of the universe (its description in terms of locations, shapes, distances, and directions) was distinct from time (the measurement of when events occur within the universe). However, space and time took on new meanings with the Lorentz transformation and Special relativity, special theory of relativity. In 1908, Hermann Minkowski presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions into a single four-dimens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic particles. In everyday as well as scientific usage, ''matter'' generally includes atoms and anything made up of them, and any particles (or combination of particles) that act as if they have both rest mass and volume. However it does not include massless particles such as photons, or other energy phenomena or waves such as light or heat. Matter exists in various states (also known as phases). These include classical everyday phases such as solid, liquid, and gas – for example water exists as ice, liquid water, and gaseous steam – but other states are possible, including plasma, Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, and quark–gluon plasma. Usually atoms can be imagined as a nucleus of protons and neu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Platonic Forms
The Theory of Forms or Theory of Ideas, also known as Platonic idealism or Platonic realism, is a philosophical theory credited to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. A major concept in metaphysics, the theory suggests that the physical world is not as real or true as Forms. According to this theory, Forms—conventionally capitalized and also commonly translated as Ideas—are the timeless, absolute, non-physical, and unchangeable essences of all things, which objects and matter in the physical world merely participate in, imitate, or resemble. In other words, Forms are various abstract ideals that exist even outside of human minds and that constitute the basis of reality. Thus, Plato's Theory of Forms is a type of philosophical realism, asserting that certain ideas are literally real, and a type of idealism, asserting that reality is fundamentally composed of ideas, or abstract objects. Plato describes these entities only through the characters (primarily Socrates) in his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
