Travels in four dimensions : the enigmas of space and time / Robin Le Poidevin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Le Poidevin, Robin, 1962-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Space and time.

Physical Description:

xviii, 275 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Space and time are the most fundamental features of our experience, and yet they are also the most puzzling. Did time have a beginning? Is there space beyond the universe? Would time go on if everything else stopped? Could space exist with nothing in it? Might time travel be possible? Are there parallel worlds? Could time go backwards? Is there a fourth dimension of space? Are space and time just the constructions of our minds? Robin Le Poidevin provides a clear, witty, and stimulating guide through these and many other puzzles and paradoxes. Drawing on a variety of examples from science, history, and literature, he gives a vivid sense of the difficulties raised by our ordinary ideas of space and time, and equips us to think about these problems for ourselves. No prior knowledge of science or philosophy is required to enjoy this book. The universe might seem very different after reading it.

Contents:

1. The Measure of All Things 1

Incident at Greenwich 1

Metric, Convention, and Fact 5

Time and the Laws of Nature 8

2. Change 13

Time as Change 13

Time without Change? 17

Everything Has a Reason 24

3. A Box with No Sides? 30

Where Two Worlds Meet 30

Aristotle against the Void 31

Jars, Pumps, and Barometers 34

Lessons of the Vacuum 36

The Redundancy of Space 41

The Search for Absolute Motion 44

4. Curves and Dimensions 52

Euclid Displaced 52

Space Makes Its Presence Felt 57

The Lone Hand 62

More than Three Dimensions? 66

5. The Beginning and End of Time 73

Echoes of Creation, Portents of Armageddon 73

The Limits of Reason 76

Can the Past be Infinite? 79

The Great Circle 83

6. The Edge of Space 89

Archytas at the Edge 89

Is There Space beyond the Universe? 92

The Illusion of Infinity 95

7. Infinity and Paradox 101

Zeno: How the Tortoise Beat Achilles 101

Two Responses to Zeno: Infinitesimals and Finitism 104

Thomson's Lamp 107

A Puzzle about Transition 111

Democritus' Cone 115

Atoms of Space and Time 119

8. Does Time Pass? 122

The Mystery of Passage 122

McTaggart's Proof of the Unreality of Time 127

First Response: Presentism 135

Second Response: the B-Theory 140

Why Is There Only One Present? 143

9. The Cinematic Universe 148

Muybridge's Horse and Zeno's Arrow 148

No Motion at an Instant? 150

No Motion in the Present? 156

Zeno and the Presentist 159

10. Interfering with History 164

The Lost Days 164

The Alterability of the Past 167

Dilemmas of the Time-Traveller 174

Causation in Reverse 181

11. Other Times and Spaces 185

Probability and the Multiverse 185

Branching Space 191

Objections and Consequences 193

12. The Arrows of Time 202

The Hidden Signpost 202

Three Arrows, and Why Things Fall Apart 206

The Mind's Past 213

The Seeds of Time 218

Parallel Causes 221

Is Time Order Merely Local? 223

Are Causes Simultaneous with Their Effects? 226

A Sense of Direction in a Directionless World 229

Mr Dunne's Dream and Other Problems 248.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [263]-268) and index.

ISBN:

0198752547

0198752555

OCLC:

50773574