The Direction of Time

by Hans Reichenbach and Maria Reichenbach

Book Overview

Ever a source of philosophical conjecture and debate, the concept of time represents the beating heart of physics. This final work by the distinguished physicist Hans Reichenbach represents the culmination and integration of a lifetime's philosophical contributions and inquiries into the analysis of time. The result is an outstanding overview of such qualitative, or topological, attributes of time as order and direction.
Beginning with a discussion...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486409260
• ISBN13: 9780486409269
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Cutting through the muck and sophistry.

I feel compelled to add a review in the face of the uncharitable way this book is being treated on this page. It is unfair to demean this book because it is "hard to read". This is certainly not the case. Reichenbach's clear exposition and scrupulous devotion to honesty is a breath of fresh air, especially with philosophy and particularly metaphysics suffering as they do from sophistry and anti-scientific self-importance. The book's philosophical currents are marred only by the idealism of the positivist program, but this does not have as much as an impact on Reichenbach's conclusions as his critics would like to think. Whether logic itself is a matter of empirical inquiry or something a priori given, it still seems to correspond to reality in either case, so the flaw is not a fatal one. The strength of the reaction against this kind of manifesto of clarity and honesty is testament to its importance and impact, and it belongs on the shelf of any mathematician, scientist, or philosopher.

The Direction of Time

I can't believe that everyone didn't rate this with 5 stars! I had to write this because this was one of those really great books that changed my understanding of something that seems so basic, so obvious, time. Well well worth the 5 bucks.

Time: Why is it so important?

H.Reichenbach is undoubtly one of the most remarkable scientists that the world has ever witnessed. The interested mind is to be very strongly urged to read the book 'The direction of time' by him. Time is an essential concept to every physics student, as without it nature would be meaningless, and therefore the study of nature would be an empty pursuit. Whenever we wish to understand why we are in the 'world', say rather than in the planet MARS we have to understand thoroughly what actually happenned in the past, beginning from The Big Bang, that is, from the beginning of time. The book gives us a clear understanding into this inquiry ('TIME') developing both classical and quantum mechanical content of the concept of time starting from the first principles. The book carefully clarifies many confusing conceptions about time. For instance, the author clearly explains the contradictions lying in the famous Zeno's paradox which attemts to prove that time does not exist, in such a way that the physics student is now much more confident with such essential concepts as displacement and velocity. Also in the book, another essential concept of statistical physics ENTROPY is developed in a very systematic way and through this concept the direction of time is decisively established. Moreover, the issue of DETERMINACY or INDETERMINACY , an issue which is simply ignored in the text books or mentioned briefly in a few sentences as if it is self-evident and therefore does not need further elaboration, is discussed in depth, so both theoretical and experimental physicists have now a strong ground in arguing their proposals. I, as a physicist of 18 years of university lecturing experience, strongly recommend it to every single physics student or actually every single mind (student or not) who cares about the future, and who needs a decisive explanation (justification) for their potential steps to save (before being too late) our home THE WORLD WHICH WE NOW LIVE IN, only home only home and only home for us and for our childeren including of course our organic bodies, the animals and the plants. The direction of time and equally of The ENTROPY are the key concepts to understand what technology actually is, and to understand why it is inevitable to face more and more polluted environment as technology advances.

This is a great book

It is a beautiful but exterememly difficult book. It covers the concept of time and direction of time from the beginning up to current thinking. Author, being one of the founding fathers of philosophical quantum theory first introduces a good understanding of Thermodaynamics and Statiastical Physics and defines the order of events to lead into statistical definition of arrow of time. A lot of difficult concepts from Classsical Statistical Physics, Probability Theory, Relativity and Mathematical Logic as well as a good understanding of Quantum Physics is assumed to be in the bag of the reader, after all this book is not a Popular Science book. Although the author claims that knowledge of derivations of the formulas used are not critical to understand this study yet time to time the language and logic becames exteremely difficult. This is a must read book in this subject, may be many times or time and time over after increasing the understanding in other subjects that only tools in this book.