About Time : : Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the big Bang

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Call Number: 523.18 Fr
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

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Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	523.18 Fr	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Talking sky, working stone and living field : from prehistory to the agricultural revolution -- The city, the cycle and the epicycle : from the urban revolution to a rational universe -- The clock, the bell tower and the spheres of God : from the medieval monastery to the renaissance cosmos -- Cosmic machines, illuminated night and the factory clock : from Newton's universe to thermodynamics and the Industrial Revolution -- The telegraph, the electric clock and the block universe : the imperatives of simultaneity from time zones to Einstein's cosmos -- The expanding universe, radio hours and washing machine time : speed, cosmology and culture between the world wars --The Big Bang, Telstar, and a new Armageddon : the nuclear big bang's triumph in a televised space age -- Inflation, cell phones and the outlook universe : information revolutions and the big bang gets in trouble -- Wheels within wheels : cyclic universes and the challenge of quantum gravity : eternal time through repeating time -- Ever-changing eternities : the promise and perils of a multiverse : eternal inflation, arrows of time and the anthropic principle -- Giving up the ghost : the end of beginnings and the end of time : cosmology's radical alternatives in three acts -- In the fields of leaning grass : ending the beginning in human and cosmic time.
"The Big Bang is dead and astrophysicist Adam Frank explains how our experience of time will change as a result"-- Provided by publisher.

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The center of the universe: rebel thinkers and the coming paradigm shift submitted by vk on May 20, 2014, 9:45pm "About Time" is a book that can be read backwards. Its final Chapter 12 gives the reader a glimpse of Adam Frank's world view within which he writes this uncommon treatise. In his words, "seeing the braided evolution of cosmic time and human time points us to the deepest question of all: what is the nature of truth in cosmological science?" "Acknowledging the intertwined evolution of culture and cosmic vision... allows us to see... our role as participants in the universe." "Either way we find ourselves back where we belong, at the center of our universe -- a universe suffused with meaning and potential." [BTW, an older book on cosmology that comes to similar conclusion, but within the standard model, is "The View from the Center of the Universe -- Discovering our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos", by Joel R.Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams.]

From this point of view, Adam Frank gives prominence in Chapter 11 to several rebel thinkers in physics: Julian Barbour who says that time is an illusion; Andreas Albrecht who advocates a clock ambiguity, that different choices of clocks lead to different kinds of physics; and Lee Smolin who challenges the existence of timeless laws of physics. Because Frank sees us moving away from a reflexive Copernicanism built into the standard model, he is willing to engage rebel thinking in Chapter 11 as well as throughout the latter half of the book (Chapters 8-10) in which Frank surveys the various alternative theories to the standard big Bang model. To me, the value of this book over the other cosmology books currently in vogue is that Frank takes rebel thinkers seriously and relates their thinking back to the standard model. Frank clearly advocates for a paradigm shift, and not just within science. Whether you agree with this or not, you will find this book engaging and well worth reading, forwards and backwards.

ew submitted by Kenes on July 12, 2020, 4:01pm worth reading and good understanding