The Order of Time

Time is fundamentally very strange. Not just from our relationship with it through memory and predictions of the future but also as a studied notion in physics, from the theory of relativity to quantum mechanics and beyond.

Although the material could easily fill a tome that could be a huge turn-off to the layperson, Carlo Rovelli manages to weave art, philosophy, and poetry into an exploration of time over a short 182 pages that makes it a compelling and beautiful read. What is time? How do we experience it? What is a world without it? What is its relationship to… show more.

Heidegger identified our perception of time as the “horizon of being.”  This brief, very accessible book by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli looks at how human beings exist in time through our consciousness.

It explains how memory defines us, and gives us the experience of time itself.  Every moment of our existence is linked to our immediate and distant past by strands of memory.  As Rovelli states, “our present swarms with traces of our past.  We are histories of ourselves, narratives.” 

This book makes clear how each one of us is a long, ongoing novel, and how our relationship to that… show more.

Carlos Rovelli’s The Order of Time is not at all a fantasy book—it is science—but nevertheless the most inspiring, life changing fantasy I’ve ever read. If I look around me with scientist Rovelli’s eyes, I too see that “the world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.” Beautiful, weird, and scientifically accurate. True fantasy! 

The ultimate answer to the nature of the universe depends on quantum physics. Most proposed solutions to the problem of quantum gravity either eliminate time altogether or downgrade it to a merely emergent property of a fundamentally timeless system. Leading theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli draws a picture as to how we might understand time (or the lack thereof) through the lens of quantum physics. He finishes by proposing that our perception of time really has to do with emotion and our individual relation to events.

I've been lucky enough to interview Rovelli in the past and he is as much a poet as he is a theoretical physicist. Working at the coal-face of modern physics research, he's helping to develop a theory called loop quantum gravity. The Order of Time is a beautifully written contemplation on the physics of time, including the astounding notion that time may not even exist.