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lulu628's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
2.0
I think Smolin is attempting to make the case that cosmological physics needs a shift in some of the assumptions of "obvious truths" to make better progress in finding the underlying structure and laws of the universe. This is likely a fair point, but he spends the last part of the book delving into what amounted to a philosophical defense of his preferred method of resolving the issue. Despite his assertion that the real language of science is words, some math or even more precise wording may have made the book feel less wobbly - or at least cutting out the rambling epilogue (seriously, what was that?)
bookdragon_sansan's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
3.5
raviwarrier's review against another edition
4.0
The beautiful part of this book is that Lee attempts and mostly succeeds in explaining complex physical concepts to the laymen.
That I disagree with the conclusions have no bearing to how much I enjoyed reading it. (My disagreements are inconsequential as it is intuitive and I've no scientific bases or argument).
That I disagree with the conclusions have no bearing to how much I enjoyed reading it. (My disagreements are inconsequential as it is intuitive and I've no scientific bases or argument).
lizshayne's review against another edition
4.0
When it comes to physics books, I tend to have one of two problems. Either they are the "for-dummies" and I feel spoken down to or they deal with the complexities of physics and I feel like my brain is about to fall out of my head because I want to conceptually wrap my mind around the ideas presented and the best I can get is bashing my head against them.
I liked Time Reborn precisely because it was this latter kind of book. The ideas are presented as speculative and, frankly, a bit brain-melty and that actually works in the book's favor.
Leaving aside the cosmology, which I am SO not qualified to comment on, I found Smolin's call for a departure from the Newtonian paradigm for experiments and predictions to be one of the best parts of the book. The way he thinks about what science should do and the way that experiments should be able to provide testable predictions and answer the questions we want to ask was both compelling and rhetorically well-handled.
And, make no mistake, this book is a triumph of scientific rhetoric as well as a fascinating tour of the possible Universe. Which is the best part - Smolin focuses on the possibilities of physics and where we might be able to go, if we dare.
(And I think the idea that time is real, but that space is emergence and size is an illusion is one of those things that I will be left chewing on for a while).
I liked Time Reborn precisely because it was this latter kind of book. The ideas are presented as speculative and, frankly, a bit brain-melty and that actually works in the book's favor.
Leaving aside the cosmology, which I am SO not qualified to comment on, I found Smolin's call for a departure from the Newtonian paradigm for experiments and predictions to be one of the best parts of the book. The way he thinks about what science should do and the way that experiments should be able to provide testable predictions and answer the questions we want to ask was both compelling and rhetorically well-handled.
And, make no mistake, this book is a triumph of scientific rhetoric as well as a fascinating tour of the possible Universe. Which is the best part - Smolin focuses on the possibilities of physics and where we might be able to go, if we dare.
(And I think the idea that time is real, but that space is emergence and size is an illusion is one of those things that I will be left chewing on for a while).
smcleish's review against another edition
2.0
Annoyingly poorly argued book about moving beyond current ideas of time in physics, with some interesting ideas. Smolin spends most of the book discussing the "timelessness" of modern physics, both relativity and quantum mechanics, without ever properly defining what he means by the term. It's clearly not whether the theories have a time parameter in them, but it seems in some places to mean that time is treated as a whole, as it is in the "block universe" of relativity, and in others that the laws of physics themselves do not change. Smolin thinks we need to look at changing laws in order to fix some of the problems with these theories, but his ensuing discussion of what form these changes may take is infuriatingly inconsistent and contains logical flaws (there is a particularly glaring one on p.163 of this edition). Sometimes he seems to be envisaging laws changing only at the creation of a new universe (if his earlier ideas about black holes in one universe containing new generations of universes inside them is adopted); at others, he seems to be talking about changes between distant parts of the same universe or over time, again in a single universe. Where was the editor when they were needed?
jjosh_h's review against another edition
3.0
It is a fascinating read that is heavy on the claims and light on distinguishing facts from opinion. 3.25/5 stars.
Read my full review on my blog:
https://jjoshh.com/2019/11/09/time-reborn-by-lee-smolin-a-discussion-on-the-nature-of-time-itself/
Read my full review on my blog:
https://jjoshh.com/2019/11/09/time-reborn-by-lee-smolin-a-discussion-on-the-nature-of-time-itself/
hilaritas's review against another edition
3.0
I remain largely unconvinced by Smolin's reasoning but I did come to appreciate his project, less for the strength of its argument and more as an example of Smolin's "principle of the open future" that encourages developing a "diverse range of viewpoints and hypotheses" when rational argument alone can't solve a problem. I accept Smolin's book in the spirit of throwing out some wild ideas to see if anything sticks rather than as a closely reasoned and evidence-supported argument.
He appears to have an ax to grind with Platonism (although he weirdly attributes it more often to Aristotle by way of Christianity), and wants to emphasize the importance of time to support the possibility of change in order to support his political commitments. So he's basically reinvented Heraclitus as a physics theory. All well and good, I suppose, but I never quite understood how he's done anything more than push the metaphysical question back a step. If the universe did not begin in the Big Bang but instead has evolved (including the laws governing it) through a potentially infinite series of rebirths or birthing of new universes in black holes, you still have to account for why anything exists rather than nothing, and how that process began (and continues to occur). And how mathematics maps to the observable qualities of existence in a way that would permit such cosmological transformations to occur. So in that respect, his philosophical argument seemed a bit half-baked. At least he did acknowledge near the end that the deep metaphysical questions of why anything exists is beyond him.
I'm not an expert on physics despite an amateur interest in books like these, but I found the heavy-lifting portions of his physics proof to be largely opaque due to excessive jargon, seemingly jumpy logic, and good old-fashioned hand-waving away of the details that may support or refute his position. I will give credit that his motives for wanting to rescue time from theories of timeless transcendence appear noble, as he wants us to take more seriously our obligations to care for our environment, accept the gravity of moral choices, and to infuse meaning into existence. Which I guess forgives his shaggy and rambling epilogue where he opines on subjects far afield of his own expertise, like political theory, economics, and the hard problem of consciousness. It turns out his theory that time is real, man, can solve all problems in all areas of inquiry!
I'm glad I slogged through this even though I found it quite exhausting at times. Although it wasn't a first-rate pop science book, Smolin is ambitious and enthusiastic, which goes a long way. Further, and completely frivolously, I never stopped wondering which member of Suicide was his cousin.
He appears to have an ax to grind with Platonism (although he weirdly attributes it more often to Aristotle by way of Christianity), and wants to emphasize the importance of time to support the possibility of change in order to support his political commitments. So he's basically reinvented Heraclitus as a physics theory. All well and good, I suppose, but I never quite understood how he's done anything more than push the metaphysical question back a step. If the universe did not begin in the Big Bang but instead has evolved (including the laws governing it) through a potentially infinite series of rebirths or birthing of new universes in black holes, you still have to account for why anything exists rather than nothing, and how that process began (and continues to occur). And how mathematics maps to the observable qualities of existence in a way that would permit such cosmological transformations to occur. So in that respect, his philosophical argument seemed a bit half-baked. At least he did acknowledge near the end that the deep metaphysical questions of why anything exists is beyond him.
I'm not an expert on physics despite an amateur interest in books like these, but I found the heavy-lifting portions of his physics proof to be largely opaque due to excessive jargon, seemingly jumpy logic, and good old-fashioned hand-waving away of the details that may support or refute his position. I will give credit that his motives for wanting to rescue time from theories of timeless transcendence appear noble, as he wants us to take more seriously our obligations to care for our environment, accept the gravity of moral choices, and to infuse meaning into existence. Which I guess forgives his shaggy and rambling epilogue where he opines on subjects far afield of his own expertise, like political theory, economics, and the hard problem of consciousness. It turns out his theory that time is real, man, can solve all problems in all areas of inquiry!
I'm glad I slogged through this even though I found it quite exhausting at times. Although it wasn't a first-rate pop science book, Smolin is ambitious and enthusiastic, which goes a long way. Further, and completely frivolously, I never stopped wondering which member of Suicide was his cousin.
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