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A review by lizshayne
Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe by Lee Smolin
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).