THE JANUS POINT: A New Theory of Time, difficult, worthwhile read for #Booksgiving

THE JANUS POINT: A New Theory of Time
JULIAN BARBOUR
Basic Books
$32.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time — and shapes the destiny of the universe.

Time is among the universe's greatest mysteries. Why, when most laws of physics allow for it to flow forward and backward, does it only go forward? Physicists have long appealed to the second law of thermodynamics, held to predict the increase of disorder in the universe, to explain this.

In The Janus Point, physicist Julian Barbour argues that the second law has been misapplied and that the growth of order determines how we experience time. In his view, the big bang becomes the "Janus point," a moment of minimal order from which time could flow, and order increase, in two directions. The Janus Point has remarkable implications: while most physicists predict that the universe will become mired in disorder, Barbour sees the possibility that order — the stuff of life — can grow without bound.

A major new work of physics, The Janus Point will transform our understanding of the nature of existence.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: On the Solstice, I think a lot about time. Why time's arrow only points in one direction, for example. I am always bothered by the implication inherent in the laws of physics that we presently understand that this is an observational artifact, not part of the structure of physics.

While I sit and ponder the strange dichotomies between what we observe and what theory tells us is possible, Author Barbour sets himself the task of learning the why, and questioning the how, of all the factors in physics that determine this issue's boundaries. That is an immense task.

It is also one well beyond most people's educational, vocational, and experiential capacities. The author isn't writing an academic paper in this book. He is, however, presupposing a lot of knowledge on the reader's part...if you don't know what a Boltzmann brain is, for example, this book will be lost on you...and even for those with the requisite grounding in at least the people who created the outlines of the Standard Model of particle physics, the need for frequent research breaks, aka "fallings down the many rabbit holes", is ever-present.

Very much not a Wikipedia-level treatment of an immensely important topic being argued, studied, researched, and pondered by some of the best-furnished minds in the field of physics today; yet it does not repel boarders with its case-shot loaded cannons of erudition. Author Barbour is quippy and quotable. The problem is quoting him won't help. This is someone with a very broad grasp of physics, history, cultural anthropology, etc. He lays out arguments that I suspect I only dimly grasp for his new model of endlessly repeatable order, ie creation of matter instead of its inevitable and complete decay, grounded in all the currents of thought there are.

Not, as you'd expect, a mere bagatelle to be consumed of an evening. Took me two years to read it, and I regret not a page or a minute of it. I was rewarded with a greatly expanded idea of what the science of physics is reaching for in its quest for a unified theory.

At this #Booksgiving moment, self-gifting this immensely challenging and deeply absorbing book is a great way to invest in your brain's expansion in entirely new ways and directions. It will be a Project. It is also well worth your eyeblinks.

THE OTHER EINSTEIN, the reconstructed life of the first Mrs. Einstein

THE OTHER EINSTEIN
MARIE BENEDICT
Sourcebooks Landmark
$25.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A vivid and mesmerizing novel about the extraordinary woman who married and worked with one of the greatest scientists in history.

What secrets may have lurked in the shadows of Albert Einstein’s fame? His first wife, Mileva “Mitza” Marić, was more than the devoted mother of their three children—she was also a brilliant physicist in her own right, and her contributions to the special theory of relativity have been hotly debated for more than a century.

In 1896, the extraordinarily gifted Mileva is the only woman studying physics at an elite school in Zürich. There, she falls for charismatic fellow student Albert Einstein, who promises to treat her as an equal in both love and science. But as Albert’s fame grows, so too does Mileva’s worry that her light will be lost in her husband’s shadow forever.

A literary historical in the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein reveals a complicated partnership that is as fascinating as it is troubling.

THE PUBLISHER SENT A REVIEW COPY AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU!

My Review: Marie Benedict, I salute you. The decision to tell the story of Albert Einstein's first wife, physicist Mileva Marić, and her intense intellectual beginnings fading into parental tragedy, emotional aridity, and ultimately humiliating drudgery, was bold beyond belief. There was quite simply no way on this wide green earth to make everyone with an interest in the story happy. Many would be satisfied with nothing less than a jargon-laden, drily scientific reconstruction of the potential/probable debates the couple most likely had. Others would faint from terror at the mere mention of names like Boltzmann, Mach, Drude, et alii. The line Benedict chose to tread was weighted in favor of broad strokes on all fronts. Imagine a woman...an Eastern European woman...arriving at one of the world centers of scientific inquiry at all, at a time in history when women had no vote to cast, no right to own property, and the very real risk of dying in socially mandatory childbirth across the entire world.

That was Mileva. Really, that is all that must be said of her. She was so exceptional that she arrived in this place at all, held her own academically, and but for meeting a charming rogue who wiled her out of her virginity and thus her rightful place in the world, might well have been as much a name to conjure with as Madame Marie Curie. Benedict does this by whisking us through the social life of Mileva's bluestocking buddies as they have musicales and climb local beauty spots, the whirl of cafe society among Mileva's male colleagues as they discuss and dispute their subject's roil and ferment over coffee, introducing us to the extraordinarily supportive Serbian father whose dreams and fears for Mileva come through his comparatively few actual lines. All in barely a hundred pages.

It is the fate of any author telling a private person's personal story to be an inventor. Dialogue can't be anything but invented. Letters, especially in the Belle Epoque, can (if Clio so wills it) be found and either quoted or digested, but Life isn't a novel and so doesn't offer the precise words needed for dramatic purposes. After all, fiction is a bunch of lies that, properly stuck together, make the truth undeniably visible to all. Benedict has very clearly made her way through a great deal of research material and has selected from the piles, stacks, boxes, shelves those moments and matters and words that best fit her plot.

The saddest part of the above, to me, is that she wasn't required to do very much discarding or eliding to make Albert Einstein into a proper shit of a man. The daughter he never saw, born out of wedlock because his harpy of a mother wouldn't countenance Mileva as a wife for her unemployed wastrel of a darling, was only the beginning of a life-long pattern of verbal abuse...there exists a letter from him to Mileva listing an appalling, humiliating list of conditions she must follow to be allowed to remain with the Great Man...and emotional neglect that extended to his two sons from their marriage. Not that he was any too cuddlesome to his cousin Elsa, aka Mrs. Einstein the Second: He proposed to her younger, prettier daughter after finally wearing Mileva down into agreeing to a divorce. Wise lady said no; her mama married Einstein anyway, knowing what was what.

Mileva's later Einsteinless life was one of economic deprivation, despite the eventual arrival of the Nobel Prize money promised to her in the divorce settlement. (Her own family's economic comfort evaporated with the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Great War.) One of her sons was schizophrenic. Investing in a Swiss boarding house didn't work out well. Mileva was born under an unlucky star, and was so very clearly an intelligent, decent human being who deserved better than she settled for in life.

She was a tragic pioneer of women's rights to a place at the table in the sciences. She was a fascinating character. She deserves to be discussed, celebrated, lauded along side her famous ex-husband, and Marie Benedict has made a sold stride in that direction by writing The Other Einstein. September is National Science Club Month, and if I were in a science club, I'd demand we read this book. There is so very much to discuss in these pages, discussions that will last well beyond the club meeting itself.

THE FABRIC OF REALITY, twenty years on, presents the Multiverse argument clearly and concisely and still freshly

THE FABRIC OF REALITY: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications
David Deutsch
Penguin Books
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: For David Deutsch, a young physicist of unusual originality, quantum theory contains our most fundamental knowledge of the physical world. Taken literally, it implies that there are many universes “parallel” to the one we see around us. This multiplicity of universes, according to Deutsch, turns out to be the key to achieving a new worldview, one which synthesizes the theories of evolution, computation, and knowledge with quantum physics. Considered jointly, these four strands of explanation reveal a unified fabric of reality that is both objective and comprehensible, the subject of this daring, challenging book.

The Fabric of Reality explains and connects many topics at the leading edge of current research and thinking, such as quantum computers (which work by effectively collaborating with their counterparts in other universes), the physics of time travel, the comprehensibility of nature and the physical limits of virtual reality, the significance of human life, and the ultimate fate of the universe. Here, for scientist and layperson alike, for philosopher, science-fiction reader, biologist, and computer expert, is a startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new, optimistic message about existence.

My Review: I report that The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch is simply wonderful. Clear, well-turned prose, ample illustrative examples of his points, and a beautifully thought-out explication of the bizarre nature of reality as explained in the far reaches of physics. The fact that Richard Dawkins is cited as an inspiration for Mr. Deutsch's work should forewarn the spiritual seekers in the audience to avoid this book at all costs. It takes a very clear stance against there being a supernatural agency in the workings of the Multiverse.

Instead, Deutsch says that the Multiverse is weird enough to contain answers to all questions couched in numinous terms and to explain all phenomena and experiences the species has filed in the "supernatural" bin. His arguments are presented without condescension or hectoring, which is a common failing in the prose that wishes to "debunk" the spiritual experience. He simply explains how the experiences fit into the framework of the Multiverse. From there, he says, it's up to you the reader.

THIS is an attitude I can endorse and enjoy. I dislike the spiritual imperialism that says, "My way is Right and all others are Wrong," and equally dislike the materialist dogma that "There IS no spiritual and those who imagine there is are deluded and foolish." (I reserve that dismissive and rejecting locution for religion, not the spiritual, as they are unrelated things.) I want the arguments presented and then leave it up to me to decide what to do with the information presented. Please don't do my thinking for me! And that, laddies and gentles all, is what I feel Mr. Deutsch makes an overall successful stab at NOT doing. He favors the material explanation, and makes no bones about it; but he is very reasonable and reasoned in his advocacy, not shrill or hectoring.

A well-done work of enduring value in the cultural conversation about the nature of reality as we find it. And for reasons that I can't understand, not a gigantic bestseller. I hope that will change....