Prominent scientists and philosophers of science address contemporary debates on the nature of Time. Their contributions freely discuss its unity and reality, its compatibility with the orders of classical philosophy (present, past and future) and with the disputed idea of free will (Volume 1). They also present a detailed and updated state of the role of Time in the so-called exact sciences: biology — or more precisely genetics, evolution, neurosciences, natural and artificial intelligence (Volume 2) , and physics — relativity, quantum mechanics and quantum gravity, and cosmology (Volume 3).
Contents:
- Volume 1: The Metaphysics of Time and Its Evolution:
- Temporal Naturalism (Lee Smolin)
- J T Fraser's Paradigm Shift (Frederick Turner)
- Who is Entitled to Talk about Time and Irreversibility? (Etienne Klein)
- Time, Free Will, and Modern Physics (Christophe Bouton)
- Rethinking Time and Determinism: What Happens to Determinism When You Take Relativity Seriously (Jenann Ismael)
- The Present's Specificity (Michel Weber)
- Presentism: Past and Future (Jonathan Tallant and David Ingram)
- Does the Past Exist? (Francis Wolff)
- Deep Time: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (Max Dresow)
- Time in Historical Science (Carol E Cleland and Joseph Wilson)
- Time and the Question of the Anthropocene (Jan Zalasiewicz and Colin Waters)
- Volume 2: Life Sciences:
- Time, Operational Scale, and Emergent Modularity in Evolution (Michael Crawford)
- Timing of Genes and Development (Florence Petit)
- The Feeling of Time Continuity: Not as Obvious as It Seems? (Anne Giersch)
- Mental Imagery and Time (Eve A Isham and Morteza Izadifar)
- Cognitive Neuroscience of Time: Nows, Timelines, and Chronologies (Virginie van Wassenhove)
- Memory and Time: From Past- to Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel (Pascale Piolino and Valentina La Corte)
- Neuroscience Reveals the Role of Timing in the Brain (Rémy Lestienne)
- Timing, Spikes, and the Brain (Simon Thorpe)
- Bayesian Sense of Time in Biological and Artificial Brains (Zafeirios Fountas and Alexey Zakharov)
- Bridging the Neuroscience and Physics of Time (Dean Buonomano and Carlo Rovelli)
- Volume 3: Physical Sciences and Cosmology:
- The Physics of 'Now' (James B Hartle)
- Discovering Physical Time within Human Time (Ronald P Gruber, Carlos Montemayor and Richard A Block)
- New (and Old) Work on the Fundamentality of Time (Dean Rickles and Jules Rankin)
- The Layers That Build Up the Notion of Time (Carlo Rovelli)
- Senses in Which Time Does and Does Not Exist (Julian Barbour)
- The Complex Timeless Emergence of Time in Quantum Gravity (Daniele Oriti)
- Time and Durations in Relativistic Physics (Marc Lachièze-Rey)
- Problem of Time: Lie Theory Suffices to Resolve It (Edward Anderson)
- Views, Variety, and Celestial Spheres (Lee Smolin)
- Scientific Cosmogony, the Time in Quantum Relativistic Physics (Gilles Cohen-Tannoudji and Jean-Pierre Gazeau)
- PT Symmetry (Carl M Bender)
- Experimental Evidence for Time Reversal Violation (David G Hitlin)
- Free Will and the Arrow of Time (Marina Cortês)
Readership: Students and highly educated people with concern in scientific culture.
Key Features:
- Prominent scientists and philosophers of science address contemporary debates on the nature of Time
- Their contributions freely discuss its unity and reality, its compatibility with the orders of classical philosophy (present, past and future) and with the disputed idea of free will (volume 1)
- They also present a detailed and updated state of the role of Time in the so-called exact sciences: biology — or more precisely genetics, evolution, neurosciences, natural and artificial intelligence (volume 2), and physics — relativity, quantum mechanics and quantum gravity, and cosmology (volume 3)
- Ten leading researchers address key contemporary scientific issues, including: genetic mechanisms in development and evolution; neuroscientific analysis of the memory and consciousness and the timing mechanisms of neuronal networks. Contributions freely discuss its specificity and its relation to the time of physical sciences, its relation with the orders of classical philosophy (present, past and future) and with the various mechanisms of memories that evolution has fitted in the brain
- Thirteen prominent researchers from psychologists to theoretical physicists and cosmologists examine the fundamental question of how the concept of time fits into a theoretical description of the universe. This has become a hotly-debated question, as theories of quantum gravitation point to timeless theories, consistent with the most popular interpretation of Einsteinian Relativity with its full determinism and block-universe. However, scientists including Lee Smolin, Dean Rickles and Jules Rankin, are convinced that we need time in the more fundamental physical theories, while others like Daniel Oriti, Gilles Cohen-Tannoudji and Jean-Pierre Gazeau explore new ways to give the concept a role in modern cosmology
