Timeless Reality : Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes

By Victor J. Stenger

Quantum physics has many extraordinary implications. One of the most extraordinary is that events at the atomic and subatomic level seem to depend on the future as well as the past. Is time really reversible?Physicist Victor J. Stenger says yes. Contrary to our most basic assumptions about the inevitable flow of time from past to future, the underlying reality of all phenomena may have no beginning and no end, and not be governed by an "arrow of time." Though aware of the possibility, physicists have generally been reluctant to accept the reversibility of time as reality because of the implied causal paradoxes: If time travel to the past were possible, then you could go back and kill your grandfather before he met your grandmother However, Stenger shows that this paradox does not apply for quantum phenomena.Many people believe that the laws of nature represent a deep, Platonic reality that goes beyond the material objects that are observed by eye and by advanced scientific instruments. Stenger maintains that reality may be simpler and less mysterious than most think. The quantum world only appears mysterious when forced to obey rules of everyday human experience. Stenger convincingly argues that, based on established principles of simplicity and symmetry, at its deepest level reality is literally timeless. Within this reality it is possible that many universes exist with different structures and laws from our own.Stenger elucidates these complex subjects with great clarity and many helpful illustrations in a fascinating book that is understandable to the educated lay reader.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573928593
• ISBN13: 9781573928595
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Enthraling adventure into the real world

The author takes the reader from basic concepts into the world of physics where I have never been before. It is not a book to take to the park to feed the birds. It, at least for me, requires concentration, energy and a love of anticipating the next step in how things came to be and why we think it so. I ordered five more related books as a result. What fun to be so challenged.

Real Five Stars (or even more).

I simply love Victor Stenger's books and lecturing. Who possibly can be better in presenting such subjects of science? After all, author is a professor of psychology as well. As Bertrand Russell wrote in 1950: "philosophy aims at a theoretical understanding of the structure of the world: on the other hand, it tries to discover and inculcate the best possible way of life..it can give to the individual a just measure of himself in relation to the whole history of man and to the astronomical cosmos". "Timeless Reality" is absolutely a "meisterstuck" dedicated to reader who is not afraid of mathematical formulas and equations. Learn from professor Stenger about time symmetry solving mysteries of quantum double nature and that cause not always precedes effect. Find more: brief history of philosophy, every topic of modern particle physics related to cosmology - explained and repeated each time when needed. If you have not find easy and convincing explanation of EPR paradox so far, you will find it here, one of the most interesting! Large sections of "Timeless Reality" successfully navigate through this hazy subject! Yes, it is a popular science book at its best, loaded with names, properties and behaviors of many exotic particles. Estimated level of difficulty rests somewhere between Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" (quantum theory content) and Alan Guth's "The Inflationary Universe" or Lee Smolin's "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity".

takes some getting used to...

I first read this book two years ago and I found the ideas presented to be very unsettling. I needed to set the book aside and think about more ordinary aspects of the world for a while. The fact is, however, that Dr. Stenger describes reality and there's no getting away from reality. Now my investigations lead me back to the implications of time symmetry. And happily, I have Dr. Stenger's book on hand to turn to again. This time, unafraid, I am finding the experience extremely satisfying.I agree with the detailed reviews written below. I would also like to add an important bit of information about trust. Anyone who has investigated this field becomes familiar with the corruption that has taken place. Science is used as propaganda to support dogmatic conclusions. Speculation is too easily mutated into whatever covert form of mysticism the author secretly harbors and seeks to spread. Therefore, it is necessary to exert significant effort to find a guide into the stranger regions of reality who can be trusted to NOT MISLEAD. Victor Stenger is someone who can be trusted.This makes all the difference in the world. I've had the pleasure of receiving several kind personal responses to questions I posed to Dr. Stenger by way of his friendly and helpful website. I was delighted to find that he is genuinely interested in furthering human understanding and improving the human condition. He is without any hidden agenda. What you see is what you get. He is interested in exposing deception instead of practicing it. He sincerely cares about individuals who struggle with the almost insurmountable challenge of trying to understand what's really going on here in the world. He provides a sense of much-needed balance in an effort that often seems to threaten one's sanity.And given the fact that what's really going on here takes some time for a person to adapt to, please take your time and let the ideas filter in gradually. Whether we like it or not, the strangeness of the world isn't going to go away. In fact, things become increasingly more interesting the more closely they are examined. And this is why having a trusty guide who's familiar with the topography is so important.I am please to see that Dr. Stenger has an important new book coming out that will further help those of us who need technological expertise in exposing the mischief of the dogmatists. "Has Science Found God?" promises to provide further comfort and support for those of us who just want to approach the truth unadulterated. If truth is defined as "good" (no matter how uncomfortable it makes us), then Dr. Stenger is firmly on the side of the good. He's a great and welcome ally.

Serious science for dedicated enthusiasts

First of all, I'd like to start with a caveat. I gave this book 5 stars, but that assumes the reader has a college education or a very technical background. For someone not used to college-level writing, I would recommend avoiding this book. Having said that, I thought this book was amazing. My head is still spinning from all the detailed, technical information about quantum physics and relativity. Without getting bogged down in the actual mathematics, this book tells you just about everything you might want to know about modern physics. Some of the best and most original writing is actually at the end, where Stenger presents his ideas on symmetry and how it relates to cosmology and the history of the universe. However, everything else in the book leads up to this, and there are plenty of references to previous chapters. Stenger's concluding paradigm is simple, logical, and aesthetic, and definitely meets his own criterion of parsimony, or Occam's razor. Parsimony is a common theme in this and Stenger's other books, and he does a great job of using it to critique and analyze the various theories and philosophical interpretations of modern physics. Again, I would recommend this book to anyone comfortable with college-level reading, but I would also love to see Stenger's concluding ideas summarized in another, less technical and more accessible format, for a wider audience.

Would have five stars if he stuck to one thesis objective...

I approve of the non-mathematical descriptions this book offers the intended audience. It elucidates some important quantitative principles in a comprehensible language (e.g. the Principle of Least Action; the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian; the 'Wave-Particle Duality' and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle; state vectors, phase, superposition, Gauge Invariance, Relativity symmetry, spin, and Lorentz transformations). I have enjoyed using this book as part of a bridge to step across the yawning gulf between popular (non-mathematical) and rigorously quantitative textbooks on Quantum theory (Quantum Electrodynamics & Quantum Field Theory). I especially liked Chapter 7 'Taming Infinity' where the Feynman-Wheeler Interaction Theory and Feynman's QED are beautifully presented for intellectual consumption. He seems especially aligned with Feynman's views of the particle nature of matter.The author has carefully placed key words in bold type throughout the book that indicate their inclusion in a generous glossary of terms near the end of the book. I have grown to appreciate this as is a valuable feature in several books at this reading level. The chapters are broken into intellectually digestible size with a fair amount of diagrams to illustrate certain concepts visually.Apparently a part of his agenda in this book, as well as in several of his other publications, is to try to correct (control) superstitious creationist (wrong) thinking concerning the origin of our Universe and equally incorrect mystical interpretations of reality. Vic flat out states that the Universe '...had no beginning and was not created.' For example, Dr. Stenger seems compelled to narrowly target the logic of theistic physicists such as Polkinghorne and Ross. In addition, he seems to be inclined to marginalize the fact that particles are a manifestation of force field excitations/waves in a quantum field description of the phenomena in our Universe. After carefully reading his book (with sincere & open-minded interest) I have come to strongly suspect that he fears an association of 'spooky action at a distance' (i.e. fields & waves) with a an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and eternal (timeless) Supreme Being who, God forbid, might have created everything (including the laws of physics). He also goes after the philosophical interpretation of QM that speculates that reality is mystically created or changed by observation & measurement. One has to wonder if maybe the author might have had some kind of traumatic religious disenchantment in his earlier travels through life that subsequently motivates him to prove that God doesn't exist. I would like to point out that I once had a bout of serious religious disillusionment from which I recovered to a simple & humble attitude and outlook towards a theological ontology of reality that is in harmony with, indeed even embraces, physical reality as we understand it from a scientific perspective. It's possible to do this and not