Screen LibraryArrow of time and reality : in search of a conciliation /
What is Reality? What is the role of human consciousness in the shaping of such a concept? These questions are as old as mankind and gave rise to the MIND-MATTER dualism which preoccupied so many physicists: Schrodinger, Wigner, etc. This book considers the problem within the realm of contemporary p...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
World Scientific Pub. Co.,
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| Publisher Address: | Singapore : |
| Publication Dates: | 1997. |
| Literature type: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/3371#t=toc |
| Summary: |
What is Reality? What is the role of human consciousness in the shaping of such a concept? These questions are as old as mankind and gave rise to the MIND-MATTER dualism which preoccupied so many physicists: Schrodinger, Wigner, etc. This book considers the problem within the realm of contemporary physics, and shows that it could be related to that of ultimate entities. The author develops the viewpoint according to which human thinking activities are fruit of the Cosmos and of its combinatorial activity. Ultimate entities, the bricks out of which our universe is made, could be hidden, as a primordial alphabet, in the foundations of the pyramid of increasing complexity, which seems to unfold as a language and to culminate in the emergence of organized and thinking structures. This is analyzed in the context of cosmological screening and horizons (an expression of our lack of access to totality) where macroscopic and microscopic can mingle, where a unification of interactions and a matching of available arrows of time can take place. This context is also that of quantum evaporation of particle-antiparticle like entities, which triggers entropy increase, and of the overlap between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem of an (global) origin of the cruising (and evanescent) "Now" is considered. A creative principle (reminiscent of the biological mitosis) is also presented which is the generator of the "event" through breaking of temporal symmetry. In this perspective, time-flow is an emergent concept: Creation of the World is declined priority on the concept of "coming into existence". Participant to the origin of the World, all (possibly virtual) processes are able to culminate into the phenomenon of consciousness and Self-Awareness. |
| Carrier Form: | 1 online resource (xix,290pages) : illustrations |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| ISBN: | 9789812819697 |
| CLC: | O412.1 |
| Contents: | ch. 1. Introduction. 1. Striking coincidences. 2. In search of unity. 3. Thermal background radiation. 4. Low entropy primordial stage. 5. Ascent and chronology of complexity. 6. A unifying vision of time-flows. 7. Potentiality of consciousness. 8. Giving meaning to reality -- ch. 2. Magnetic monopoles and causality violations. 1. Introduction. 2. G-fields, transition mappings, monopoles. 3. Gravitational monopoles and causality violation. 4. An example. 5. Magnetic mass as a monopole source of angular momentum -- ch. 3. Causality violation and unification of coupling constants. 1. Introduction. 2. Preliminaries. 3. Conformal isometry and constant expansion. 4. Magnetic mass (or charge) to mass (or electric charge) ratio. 5. Monopole phase and expansion phase of the universe -- ch. 4. Long range unified interaction and temporally first cause. 1. Introduction. 2. Motivation of the unification. 3. The Ashtekar variables. 4. SU(2) bundle over space-time and its geometry. 5. Extrema of the action and field equations on (P,h). 6. Bundle geodesies and charged particles. 7. SU(2) x U(l) unifying formalism for electromagnetism interacting with gravity. 8. Yang-Mills field on ([symbol]) and long range interaction. 9. CP violation, orbits of the mediating charges and temporally first cause. 10. A cosmic censorship -- ch. 5. Unification in the foam-like topology. 1. Introduction. 2. U(l) gauge connections at conformal null infinity. 3. Space-time non trivial bundle structure and Maxwellian connections in interaction with gravity. 4. Towards a U(l) x SU(2) gauge group -- ch. 6. Causality, determinism and orientability. 1. Preliminaries. 2. Orientability and spinor structure. 3. Evaporation of monopoles and black-holes: A necessity? -- ch. 7. "Asymptotes" to the phenomenon of gravity and remarks on physical reality. 1. Introductory remarks. 2. Asymptotes to gravity. 3. Further viewpoints -- ch. 8. PT invariance. 1. Trivial topologies. 2. Non trivial topologies -- ch. 9. Monopoles and quantum regime. 1. Introduction. 2. A generalization of the Dirac quantization rule. 3. Physical implications. 4. Dirac quantization on the hubble sphere -- ch. 10. PT violation: onset of a time-arrow. 1. Introduction: the broken vase. 2. Maxwell fields in the monopole geometry. 3. Formal quantization. 4. Superselected photonic sectors. 5. Orientability and PT violation at the quantum level. 6. Superselected quanta: an analogy with kaons? -- ch. 11. Entropy sinks and emergence of organized structures. 1. Entropy sinks. 2. The Buchdahl-Ehlers-Harrison-Geroch transformation: an entropy-like invariant. 3. Emergence of organized structures. 4. Emergence of diversity. 5. Remark on gravitational surfusion -- ch. 12. Unification and the role of time-arrows. 1. Unification: the priorities. 2. Monopole dissipation and thermodynamical arrow. 3. The cosmic dilation. 4. Retardation of radiation. 5. Cooling of the background radiation. 6. Biological rythms and cycles. 7. Linear time out of cyclic times. 8. Unfolding of consciousness and time-flow. 9. Ascent in complexity: the master-arrow? 10. Ultimate entities and the problem of the "Now" -- ch. 13. Time-latency, time-flow and universal blue-print. 1. Quantum vacuum and time-latency. 2. Generic entities and time-flow. 3. Universal blue-print and ascent in complexity -- ch. 14. Opinions on creation and reality. 1. Introduction. 2. On the big-bang theory. 3. The Hartle-Hawking no boundary proposal. 4. Linde's eternal cosmology. 5. Dyson's cosmological future. 6. Tipler's omega point. 7. The Ashtekar canonical quantum gravity. 8. String theory. 9. On the relativity of scale. 10. Eastern thought and reality. |