The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107074064)

Cosmology is in crisis. The more we discover, the more puzzling the universe appears to be. How and why are the laws of nature what they are? A philosopher and a physicist, world-renowned for their radical ideas in their fields, argue for a revolution. To keep cosmology scientific, we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve. Then we can hope to explain them. The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin propose relies on three central ideas. There is only one universe at a time. Time is real: everything in the structure and regularities of nature changes sooner or later. Mathematics, which has trouble with time, is not the oracle of nature and the prophet of science; it is simply a tool with great power and immense limitations. The argument is readily accessible to non-scientists as well as to the physicists and cosmologists whom it challenges.

Author: Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Lee Smolin
ISBN-10: 1107074061
ISBN-13: 9781107074064
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/08/2014
Pages: 566
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.10lbs
Size: 6.30h x 9.10w x 1.50d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 08/01/2015