Plato, you bastard.

[bec_87rb]

Reading on the VRE the initial chapters of a book by Lee Smolin, Time Reborn. (I get the impression he is controversial in his field of physics.) He is claiming that the Platonists have won, that modern western scientific thinking is that time is an illusion and that the laws of nature are out of the flow of time, that they exist on some eternal

Comments

The planet is not aiming for an elegant mathematical fo

[suegypt]

Do I have a right to protest this premise of his simply because I find it boring and depressing? Not to mention, MY BRAIN HURTS

If it hurts, tell the premise you Do Not Want to Play

[bec_87rb]

No need to interact with it at all. Don't let it cause you pain!

(I was just interested that in all the bull he was laying down about "how we all think about things" he had caught me at something - the assumption that what physical objects actually do is somehow an approximation of a higher truer form, and of course, that is Platonic hooey. Physical objects do exactly as they ought, because they can't intend to do anything. I've given consciousness to the entire universe if they can! *forehead slap*)

lacking educational substrate

[chhinnamasta]

His pet theory is that Einstein was wrong about time being an aspect of space

Are you saying this guy disagrees with Einstein about spacetime, time dilation, and other relativistic concepts? Really? Sounds autre. Have you read Sean Carroll's book about time? Might be interesting to read, in parallel, to get a sense of contrasting points of view. Carrol's book is on my in-stack. I haven't read it yet. I, too, lack the educational substrate to comment meaningfully on any of this.

did I think this before?

Hey, only you can answer that.

the laws of nature are out of the flow of time, that they exist on some eternal plane, perfect and unwavering... all matter is interaction and relationship between processes, that physical law evolves over time.

Given what you've written here, I'm not that clear on what Smolin has to say about time. Are you saying he imagines spacetime as a static 4D brick? If we could stand outside this brick, events would appear as paths (parabolic, or otherwise) through it, or something? That these

RE: lacking educational substrate

[bec_87rb]

I haven't read From Eternity to Here, but I might as well, and see if there is a parallel. I'll let you know how it is.

Given what you've written here, I'm not that clear on what Smolin has to say about time.

Sorry - he apparently thinks the idea that the laws of nature being envisioned as "timeless", eternal and unwavering is wrong, that Newton's idea that time is some absolute thing is wrong in light of Einstein, but he has some bone to pick with Einstein as well involving how Einstein presents an intertwined time and space. Haven't gotten into where he thinks Einstein messed up. But you can see where I might suspect crack-pottery, since attacking Newton and Einstein is part of the crackpot toolbox.

Why are you reading this? Did somebody recommend this book to you, for some reason?My former friend, Peter Watts, is still on my FB, and he was trying to read it. I had heard of the author Lee Smolin somewhere before. but couldn't place him. In a moment of weakness, I thought, well, even tho' Watts is kind of an angry asshole, he

RE: lacking educational substrate

[chhinnamasta]

I like the idea that the laws of physics may not be static... groovy, but is there any evidence to suggest they evolving? Does he present any evidence to support the idea?

RE: lacking educational substrate

[bec_87rb]

Not so far, but I have been a little stymied in finishing the darn thing, because my Me Time is the ride home, and the Metro has been in safety maintenance chaos, cutting into my reading. I haven't even gotten to your suggested book yet! Shall I skip ahead?

[ellisbell]

Man, I am so not intelligent when it comes to science. I had to read that three times and I'm still not sure I understand it. I LOVE science. But I am absolutely daft in that area. Maybe it's too big for my tiny brain to conceptualize, I'm not sure. I wish I was a little more cognizant of what everything means though, because my husband is pretty smart about it, and it would be fun to have that to talk about!

I had to read that three times

[bec_87rb]

Or, more likely, I explained it really really badly, haha. I typed it quickly to get it down before I forgot it. Or maybe he's a crackpot and it really makes no sense at its core? I'll probably try to finish the book and see if Dr. Smolin sounds less like a crackpot when I have gotten to the end of the thing.

My husband is a science guy, so if we get on the right topic, it can be terribly educational and fun.

[chhinnamasta]

How's the reading going? Any evidence that the laws of physics are dynamic? I am 2/3 through Sean Carroll's book. It's slow going, because it's on my nightstand, and how much I read is proportional to how insomniac I am. Carroll has got a lot to say about black holes and entropy at the moment. I had never heard of the holographic principle... Interesting stuff. The main thrust of discussion so far has been that the arrow of time is an artifact of the entropy gradient (low to high) since the big bang... I hope he has some remarks about human perception of that gradient, and the unidirectional encoding of memories following that arrow... perhaps something information theory related, involving Kolmogrov complexity? I don't know what I can realistically expect, or what would satisfy me, honestly

[chhinnamasta]

Okay, I cannot recommend Sean Carroll's book. It's horribly repetitive, hand waving, and tedious. If you had never heard of the second law of thermodynamics, perhaps you'd find it illuminating, but it covered too much familiar ground in an overly rudimentary manner. There must be better books on the subject.