The Network of Time

345 Pages·2020·1.547 MB·English

by  Alon Halperin

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The Network of Time
Alon Halperin

Copyright © 2020 Alon Halperin

All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any
information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.

Translation from the Hebrew by David Guerin

Contact: [email protected]

To Romy, Amit & Zohar
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
The Concept of Time – More Questions than Answers
CHAPTER 1
The Great Riddle – The Question of Time in Philosophy
during Antiquity and the Middle Ages
CHAPTER
New Horizons - The Early New Age and the New Philosophy
CHAPTER 3
The Universe as a Machine - Newton and Classical Physics
CHAPTER 4
From the Past to the Future, and Back - The Arrow of Time
CHAPTER 5
Space-Time - The Special Theory of Relativity
CHAPTER 6
The Time Tunnel - Time Travel and Wormholes
CHAPTER 7
The End of the Age of Certainty - Quantum Theory and the Measurement
Problem
CHAPTER 8
The Hidden Universe - Quantum Entanglement
CHAPTER 9
The Death Blow - The Concept of Time in the 20th Century
CHAPTER 10
Doctor Chaos and Mr. Order - Complexity Theory
CHAPTER 11
Nothing but Net - Network Theory
CHAPTER 12
The End of Time and its Rebirth? - Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin
CHAPTER 13
R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N - The Advancement of Scientific Knowledge
CHAPTER 14
The Paradigm’s Margins - New Insights in the Second Decade of the 21st
Century
CHAPTER 15
The Science of Choice - Free Choice in the Network of Time
SUMMARY
The concept of time - more answers than questions?
Bibliography

Message from the Author

INTRODUCTION
The Concept of Time –

More Questions than Answers
Time – one of the most mysterious and fascinating riddles in the history of
mankind, and also one of the most basic and useful concepts in everyday
life. There is nothing that happens in our lives which isn’t related to the
concept of time; we think during every single moment in time, make
decisions, arrive late, are in a hurry, wait, plan the future, reminisce, move
forward and then go back. And yet, time might be the biggest riddle
humanity has ever encountered, and one of the few subjects which have
been discussed at great length and immeasurable depth for thousands of
years without us arriving at even a single, uncontested insight. From ancient
times to this day, both in western and eastern philosophy, giants of thought
have tried to define time, discuss the riddles which surround it and
determine whether it is real or merely an illusion.
How did it happen that human knowledge has developed so much over the
years and today includes deep insights regarding the universe, humanity,
biology, society and the processes which take place in these worlds of
knowledge, without us being able to explain the most basic concept in this
structure? Without us producing one single, simple and clear definition for
it? Beyond the surprising fact that we can’t manage to define and explain
such a basic concept, this has far reaching implications for almost every
field of understanding the universe and in our private world. Human
knowledge was built on a foundation we do not understand, a foundation
which, with time, could bring the whole structure falling down.
Listen to the ticking of the clock… now try to explain to yourselves: What
is “time”?
As early as the 5th century, Saint Augustine wrote in his book
“Confessions”:

“What is time? If no one asks me, I know;

But if I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”1

This is one of the most famous quotes regarding the concept of time and it
appears in almost every text which deals with it, and is still thought
provoking and surprising every time we read it. If so, how would you define
this basic concept?

Intuitively we all understand what time is, however when we try to define
this concept and give it a clear explanation, we hit a conceptual dead end. If
you try to explain the concept of time to yourselves, eventually your
definition will probably converge into two concepts which characterize our
perception of time more than any other: “flow” (movement) and “change”.
Time flows, moves from one moment to another, from one event to another.
A kind of flowing river of events. The second basic and intuitive concept of
time is the concept of “change”. Our first experience of time is the change
we feel in the world. If this world would freeze like a picture on a wall you
wouldn’t ascribe an element of time to this picture. Time is the constant
change we see, hear, feel and think. It’s also the only expression we have
for measuring time. In fact, the only ways we have for measuring time are
expressed in some sort of change in the world: the movement of the clock’s
hands, the change of the display on the screen of a digital clock, the motion
of sand flowing through a glass test tube, the movement of rays of sunlight
across a stone slate and a uniform counting of the changing thoughts in our
minds. You could never measure time itself without an external factor going
through some kind of change. Every movement is measured by time but is