The Nature of Time: Geometry, Physics and Perception / Edition 1

by R. Buccheri, Metod Saniga, William Mark Stuckey

Overview

There are very few concepts that fascinate equally a theoretical physicist studying black holes and a patient undergoing seriolls mental psychosis. Time, undoubtedly, can well be ranked among them. For the measure of time inside a black hole is no less bizarre than the perception of time by a schizophrenic, who may perceive it as completely "suspended," "standing still," or even "reversing its direction. " The nature of time is certainly shrouded in profound mystery. This, perhaps, since the concept entails multifarious, and occasionally incongruous, facets. No wonder the subject attracts the serious attention of scholars on the one hand, and of the lay public on the other. Our Advanced Research Workshop is an excellent il­ lustration of this point, as the reader will soon discover. It turned out to be a unique professional forum for an unusually lively, effective and fruitful exchange of ideas and beliefs among 48 participants from 20 countries worldwide, selected out of more than a hundred applicants. The present book is based on the select talks presented at the meeting, and aims to provide the interested layperson and specialist alike with a multidisciplinary sampling of the most up-to-date scholarly research on the nature of time. It represents a coherent, state-of-the-art volume showing that research relevant to this topic is necessarily interdisciplinary and does not ignore such delicate issues as "altered" states of consciousness, religion and metaphysics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402012006
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	03/31/2003
Series:	NATO Science Series II: Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry , #95
Edition description:	2003
Pages:	446
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.05(d)

Table of Contents

1: Internal Times and Consciousness.- An Overview.- The Human Sense of Time: Biological, Cognitive and Cultural Considerations.- The Parallel-Clock Model: a Tool for Quantification of Experienced Duration.- Time in the Cognitive Process of Humans.- Studying Psychological Time with Weber’s Law.- Time and the Problem of Consciousness.- Temporal Displacement.- Discrimination and Sequentialization of Events in Perception.- Time, Consciousness and Quantum Events in Fundamental Spacetime Geometry.- How Time Passes.- Reality, and Those Who Perceive It.- The Conscious Universe.- 2: Mathematical Approaches to the Concept of Time.- An Overview.- Geometry of Time and Dimensionality of Space.- Time in Biology and Physics.- Analysis of the Relationship Between Real and Imaginary Time in Physics.- Clifford Algebra, Geometry and Physics.- The Programs of the Extended Relativity in C-Spaces: Towards Physical Foundations of String Theory.- Time Measurements, 1/F Noise of the Oscillators and Algebraic Numbers.- Internal Time and Innovation.- Quantum Computing: a Way to Break Complexity?.- On the Relational Statistical Space-Time Concept.- Self-organization in Discrete Systems with Fermi-Type Memory.- 3: The Physicist’s View of Time.- An Overview.- Thermodynamic Irreversibility and the Arrow of Time.- Time from Quantum Uncertainty.- The Arrow of Time in Quantum Theories.- Conformai Time in Cosmology.- Acausality and Retrocausality in Four- and Higher-Dimensional General Relativity.- Time, Closed Timelike Curves and Causality.- Is There More to T?.- Global Causality in Space- Time Universe.- Time at the Origin of the Universe: Fluctuations Between two Possibilities.- Quantum Cellular Automata, the EPR Paradox and the Stages Paradigm.- Planck Scale Physics, Pregeom,etry and the Notionof Time.- Causality as a Casualty of Pregeometry.- 4: Integrative Science’s Views of Time.- An Overview.- The Aristotelian Relation of Time to Motion and to the Human Soul.- The Dynamics of Time and Timelessness: Philosophy, Physics and Prospects for our Life.- Spacetime Holism and the Passage of Time.- The Intelligibility of Nature, the Endophysical Paradigm and the Relationship Between Physical and Psychological Time.- Potential and Actual Time Concepts.- Paradigms of Natural Science and Substantial Temporology.- Time Questionnaire.