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Time and Free Will.
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I’m a professor of philosophy because when I got to college, philosophy sounded like what Gandalf would study—the closest thing we have to the study of magic. It turns out, I wasn’t far from the mark. Philosophy shows you entire dimensions to the world that you never noticed because they exist at weird angles, and you have to change your way of thinking to see them. Entering them and seeing the world from those perspectives transforms everything. A great work of philosophy is like having the lights turn on in an annex of your mind you didn’t know was there, like an out-of-mind experience—or perhaps, an in-your-mind-for-the-first-time experience.
If aliens land and ask me what it’s like to be a human, I’ll give them Heidegger’s first book, Being and Time. Of course, that might prompt them to destroy all humans out of frustration at the difficulty of his writing, but if they persevere, they will find the best description of what it’s like to live out your time on this planet (One Hundred Years of Solitude comes in second).
A knowledge of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is essential for anyone who wishes to understand a great deal of recent continental work in theology as well as philosophy. Yet until this translation first appeared in 1962, this fundamental work of one of the most influential European thinkers of the century remained inaccessible to English readers. In fact the difficulty of Heidegger's thought was considered to be almost insuperable in the medium of a foreign language, especially English. That this view was unduly pessimistic is proved by the impressive work of John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson who have succeeded in clothing…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I have time, save time, spend time, waste time, write, and teach time. I am fascinated with the question of time both as a cosmological phenomenon and as an aspect that is inseparable from our existence. I channeled this fascination into a PhD dissertation, books, and articles examining the relationship between time and human existence. But like Saint Augustine, I am still baffled by the question of time and like him: "If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it …, I do not know."
The notion of time appears in many of Levinas's articles and books, but Otherwise than Being offers the most profound view. I was troubled by Bergson's and Heidegger's focus on the time of the individual, and their reduction of collective time to a vulgar, inauthentic, unreal experience. I found an answer to this discomfort in Levinas's view of time as inter-subjective. For him, time is not exterior to the subject (like the traditional view of time) nor tied with the individual, but rather is an experience in-between myself and the Other. Time is created when I am interrupted by the Other. This approach is challenging in the context of Levinas's ethical views as well as raises various questions regarding the relation between Levinas's view and our intuitive understanding of time.
I. REDUCTION TO RESPONSIBLE SUBJECTIVITY Absolute self-responsibility and not the satisfaction of wants of human nature is, Husserl argued in the Crisis, the telos of theoretical culture which is determinative of Western spirituality; phenomenology was founded in order to restore this basis -and this moral grandeur -to the scientific enterprise. The recovery of the meaning of Being -and even the possibility of raising again the question of its meaning -requires, according to Heidegger, authenticity, which is defined by answerability; it is not first an intellectual but an existential resolution, that of setting out to answer for for one's one's very…
I have time, save time, spend time, waste time, write, and teach time. I am fascinated with the question of time both as a cosmological phenomenon and as an aspect that is inseparable from our existence. I channeled this fascination into a PhD dissertation, books, and articles examining the relationship between time and human existence. But like Saint Augustine, I am still baffled by the question of time and like him: "If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it …, I do not know."
The question "what is time" troubles not only physicists and philosophers, but also captivates every human. The Fabric of the Cosmos offers a lucid examination of time (and space) that is accessible to the layperson. The book focuses on the notion of time from a cosmological perspective and explores questions from the realm of physics and philosophy. This book offered me ways to address questions that perplex me, such as: relative time and absolute time; whether time flows; whether time has a direction; the relation between quantum mechanics and time.
From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.
Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
I am fascinated by time, how a few brief moments can change or define a life, and how, when faced with danger, a first reaction can make you a hero or a coward. In trying cases, I saw how a slight hesitation or a quick glance away could make a witness under cross-examination seem a liar. The instant of truth, when everything about someone’s character becomes clear–the common theme of the five novels–is what my book is all about. The captain, Vincent Marlowe, had to make a decision about the price he had to pay for the deaths he had caused.
I cannot remember in which of his many short stories I read it, but the great Argentine writer Jorge Borges put into the mouth of one of his inimitable characters a line that has never left me: “I have often begun the study of metaphysics but have always been interrupted by happiness.” Borges was the master of the unexpected, describing situations no one could have foreseen. I have read everything he wrote and read his stories over and over again.
The ones I like best deal with bravery and cowardice but also with time and how time can change what we think happened in the past out of all recognition. In The Other Death, a man who ran away during a great battle, dying forty years later of natural causes, describes in his delirium how he had fought bravely.
Those who heard him provide this first-hand account to the…
All of Borges' dazzling fictions have been freshly translated and gathered for the first time into a single volume - from his 1935 debut with The Universal History of Iniquity, through the immensely influential collections Ficciones and the The Aleph, to his final and never before translated work from the 1980s, Shakespeare's Memory.
Somehow, electrical impulses shoot through our brains to generate a surround sound, 3D-movie experience of the world. How on earth is this possible? When I was a college student, this question burrowed into my brain and wouldn’t get out. So I decided to make a living thinking about it. Now it’s 20 years later, I’m a philosophy professor at Yale-NUS College, and I still don’t know the answer!
Most scientists think that consciousness is constructed from the swarms of particles that make up our brains. But what if it's the other way around?
Michael Pelczar explores this heady idea: he thinks that consciousness comes first, and all of physical reality, including space and time, is constructed from it. Hang on to your cranium because this book is a real mind-bender!
Michael Pelczar presents an original account of space, time and conscious experience. How does the modern scientific conception of time constrain the project of assigning the mind its proper place in nature? On the scientific conception, it makes no sense to speak of the duration of a pain, or the simultaneity of sensations occurring in different parts of the brain. Such considerations led Henri Poincare, one of the founders of the modern conception, to conclude that consciousness does not exist in spacetime, but serves as the basic material out of which we must create the physical world. The central claim…
Somehow, electrical impulses shoot through our brains to generate a surround sound, 3D-movie experience of the world. How on earth is this possible? When I was a college student, this question burrowed into my brain and wouldn’t get out. So I decided to make a living thinking about it. Now it’s 20 years later, I’m a philosophy professor at Yale-NUS College, and I still don’t know the answer!
Most things are ultimately explained by physics, but what if consciousness isn't? David Chalmers explores the idea that consciousness can't be explained in terms of bits of matter and energy scattered across spacetime; instead, consciousness is another basic part of the universe.
I’m impressed by how Chalmers’s arguments are extremely rigorous, but he also makes them accessible to ordinary people. It’s no surprise that this has become a classic of recent philosophy.
What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning?
David J. Chalmers unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain. Writing in a thought-provoking style, Chalmers proposes that conscious experience must be understood as an irreducible entity similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space that exists at a fundamental level and cannot be understood as the…
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
I grew up in farm country of central Indiana. But spent my summers on an island in northern Ontario with my grandparents. My grandfather was a self-taught naturalist and shared his love and fascination of the world around us with me. I went on to become a geologist and traveled the globe exploring for natural resources. My love of nature and science is the foundation for the science fiction I write. Whether a proven theory, a fantastical hypothesis, or true science fiction, it’s all based on science fact. It allows everyone to learn about a world built in science fiction which one day may exist in science fact.
In February 2016, astronomers announced the discovery of gravitational waves, the last remaining prediction of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Gravitational waves are produced by the collision of gigantic bodies—neutron stars, blackholes—and from exploding stars. This book details the trials and tribulations as scientists attempt to build the most accurate measuring devices known to humankind. The result of their success is the LIGO observatories in Washington and Louisiana.
Since the first discovery, we now have listened to a multitude of gravitational waves—our universe sings with these songs as the waves flow across the universe. Waves that may allow us to hear the sounds of the Big Bang. The intragalactic ships in my own books utilize these gravitational waves to travel at faster-than-light speeds. I was awed by the scientific determination and rooted for the scientists as they overcame one hurdle after another.
An updated classic that recounts the long hunt for Einstein's predicted gravitational waves-and celebrates their recent discovery
In February 2016, astronomers announced that they had verified the last remaining prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity-vibrations in space-time, called gravitational waves. Humanity can now tune in to a cosmic orchestra. We have heard the chirp of two black holes dancing toward a violent union. We will hear the cymbal crashes from exploding stars, the periodic drumbeats from swiftly rotating pulsars, and maybe even the echoes from the Big Bang itself.
Marcia Bartusiak was one of the first to report on…
I write because I want to tell stories–and I also want to share great stories with others. An avid reader and writer of fantasy and speculative fiction, I have a love of the fantastic, the remarkable and the supernatural, which I have managed to sustain and develop alongside a successful working life in government and social administration. If you want to know about power–and what you need to wield it and control it, just give me a call. Great fantasy should tell universal truths, and sometimes, more difficult messages can be told more effectively using a supernatural metaphor. Telling those stories is what I do.
I love all Alan Garner’s novels but have chosen this one because I have long been captivated by the deft and frequently quite terrifying way that Garner weaves a dark heart of fantasy and elemental magic into an everyday story of modern relationships—divorce, re-marriage, class prejudice, and economic inequality.
The book has haunted my imagination for over thirty years now, which, to me, is a sign of the work of a truly great author. I also love the way the book retells stories from ancient legend, reworking some of the central themes of the Welsh Mabinogion—some of the very earliest tales of magic and fantasy.
A 50th Anniversary Edition featuring a new introduction by Philip Pullman, THE OWL SERVICE is an all-time classic, combining mystery, adventure, history and a complex set of human relationships.
It all begins with the scratching in the ceiling. From the moment Alison discovers the dinner service in the attic, with its curious pattern of floral owls, a chain of events is set in progress that is to effect everybody's lives.
Relentlessly, Alison, her step-brother Roger and Welsh boy Gwyn are drawn into the replay of a tragic Welsh legend - a modern drama played out against a background of ancient…
I am a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University, with a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I teach courses in the philosophy of space and time, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of science. In addition to several authored and edited books on the philosophy of time, I have published many scholarly articles on time, perception, knowledge, and the history of the philosophy of time. I have always been attracted to the philosophy of time because time is quite simply at the root of everything: through the study of time we confront and illuminate the deepest possible questions both as to the nature of the physical world and as to the nature of human existence.
Our best physical understanding of the universe has no place for the passage of time as a distinct dynamical process. What time it is ‘now’ is no more a fundamental aspect of the universe than what place is ‘here’. This strikes many as counter-intuitive or impossible. Philosopher Craig Callender takes the reader on a very thorough examination of modern physical theories of time in search of an explanation as to why the time of physics seems to diverge from the time of human experience. He argues that, due to the way the laws of physics are constituted, time is just the dimension that allows for the most informative explanations for physical phenomena.
As we navigate through life we instinctively model time as having a flowing present that divides a fixed past from open future. This model develops in childhood and is deeply saturated within our language, thought and behavior, affecting our conceptions of the universe, freedom and the self. Yet as central as it is to our lives, physics seems to have no room for this flowing present. What Makes Time Special? demonstrates this claim in detail and then turns to two novel positive tasks. First, by looking at the world "sideways" - in the spatial directions - it shows that physics…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I am a professor of humanities at Johns Hopkins and have spent my career thinking, teaching, and writing about the relations between literature, philosophy, and science. Many years ago I started out thinking I would be a scientist, but then got pulled into literature and philosophy. Still, that original passion never left me. As I studied and read the great authors and thinkers from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the modern era, the big, fundamental questions of our place in the universe and the ultimate nature of reality seemed as pertinent to poets and philosophers as it is to physicists and cosmologists.
Sean Carroll has a special knack for explaining complicated stuff, and there a few things more complicated than comparing and contrasting the various competing interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Carroll has a horse in this race—the many worlds interpretation—and he’s not shy about making his case, which is in part why the book is so entertaining. A spirited polemicist, Carroll knows his chosen theory has many detractors, but he’s more than ready to debate. As a bonus his writing is as personable and witty as his explanations are clear.
'An authoritative and beautifully written account of the quest to understand quantum theory and the origin of space and time.' Professor Brian Cox
Quantum physics is not mystifying. The implications are mind-bending, and not yet fully understood, but this revolutionary theory is truly illuminating. It stands as the best explanation of the fundamental nature of our world.
Spanning the history of quantum discoveries, from Einstein and Bohr to the present day, Something Deeply Hidden is the essential guide to the most intriguing subject in science. Acclaimed physicist and writer Sean Carroll debunks the…
