Craig Callender

The core aspects of "manifest" (common-sense) time -- a now, a flow, a past/future asymmetry -- do not appear in physics theories, where a simple parameter t can suffice. Thoroughly math- and physics-versed philosopher Callender aims to explore this schism starting from the physics side. Startlingly, even his description of non-relativistic mechanics makes use of tensor math, and his discussion of quantum theory is similarly too advanced for newcomers to the subject. He pushes on with show more approaches to quantum gravity such as causal set theory and the semiclassical time concept. In the middle chapters, despite an interesting section on manifolds with multiple time dimensions, my ability to keep pace with Callender waned, and my "reading" became more like skimming and skipping. In the post-middle chapters, he switches attention to manifest time and uses a welter of psychology-like topics (including synchrony judgments, widths of subjective nows, formal info-gathering/utilizing systems as modeling tools, selves and personal narratives, and the sense of agency) to explain how a flowing now can be a part of organisms' felt reality. At the end, he opines that he has usefully scratched the schism's surface. One thing I'd bet on: no human has ever known more about time's nature than Craig Callender. show less

A weird little primer, consisting largely of boldly drawn cartoons, on the physics and philosophy of time. A lot of the important ideas and mysteries are indeed introduced. The concluding thought: "Time is a great teacher; unfortunately it kills all of its pupils."

With this book I had hoped I would get a simple introduction to the views of physicists on the notion of "time". That impression was reinforced by the use of cartoons. But that was a miscalculation. Callender has made a sort of encyclopaedia of scientific debates about "time". It’s so short in information and the cartoons are not really clarifying, that it was rather a letdown. See my larger review in my Sense-of-History-account, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2863710108

The funny thing about this one is that the philosopher-authored chapters tend to be more mathematically impenetrable than the scientist-authored chapters.