From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe

Time Reborn

One of the most original living theorists ... He challenges not only Einstein's relativity, but also the very notion of natural laws as immutable truths

Provocative and stimulating ... Smolin reconceives the universe

Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has made important contributions to the search for quantum gravity. Born in New York City, he was educated at Hampshire College and Harvard University. Since 2001 he is a founding faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His three earlier books explore philosophical issues raised by contemporary physics and cosmology. They are Life of the Cosmos (1997), Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2001) and The Trouble with Physics (2006). He lives in Toronto.

Nothing seems more real than time passing. We experience life as a succession of moments. But just as some of us see God as eternal, so physicists understand the truths of mathematics and the laws of nature as constant, transcending time. These laws dictate how the future will evolve: there is no freedom, no uncertainty about the future at all. 
 Yet, argues Lee Smolin, this denial of time is holding back both physics, and our understanding of the universe. We need a major revolution in scientific thought: one that embraces the reality of time and places it at the centre of our thinking. Time, he concludes, is not an illusion: indeed, it is the best clue that we have to fundamental reality. Time Reborn explains how the true nature of time impacts on us, our world, and our universe.

The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next

The Trouble with Physics

'The best book about contemporary science written for the layman that I have ever read. Read this book. Twice' Sunday Times

Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who is a leading pioneer of the field of quantum gravity and cosmology. He is the author of more than 100 scientific papers and two popular books, LIFE OF THE COSMOS (1997) and THREE ROADS TO QUANTUM GRAVITY (2001).

The Trouble with Physics is a groundbreaking account of the state of modern physics: of how we got from Einstein and Relativity through quantum mechanics to the strange and bizarre predictions of string theory, full of unseen dimensions and multiple universes. 
 
Lee Smolin not only provides a brilliant layman's overview of current research as we attempt to build a 'theory of everything', but also questions many of the assumptions that lie behind string theory. In doing so, he describes some of the daring, outlandish ideas that will propel research in years to come.

Lee Smolin

A masterful exposition on the state of quantum physics ... spellbinding

Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever formulated. The only problem with it, argues Lee Smolin, is that it is wrong. He attempts to examine other options for a theory of the atomic world ... a fount of provocative ideas ... lucid, upbeat and, finally, optimistic

An inventive and provocative thinker, as well as an engaging writer ... lucid, searingly honest, impassioned, inspiring

Full of extraordinary ideas ... a new theory of everything ...                Smolin's promised solution, when it comes, is just comprehensible enough for us to see that it's beautiful

Stuart Kauffman, author of At Home in the Universe

As the latest entry into the conversation, Smolin's book feels the most immediate and personal. Here is no detached narrator, but an active participant in the fray who perceives the debate over the nature of reality in personal terms. . . While the way forward remains elusive, Smolin and others who seek to illuminate how physics got to where it is today are at least making the quest for answers a bit less costly

Smolin is an extremely creative thinker who has been a leader in theoretical physics for many years. He is also a gifted writer who manages to translate his own insights about how science works into engaging language and compelling stories . . . Smolin's description of how quantum mechanics works is both elegant and accessible

The best explanation yet of what has yet to be explained.

George Dyson, author of Turing’s Cathedral

The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum

Human beings, says Lee Smolin, have always had a problem with the boundary between reality and fantasy, confusing our representations of the world with the world itself. Nowhere is this more evident than in quantum physics, which forms the basis for our understanding of everything from elementary particles to the behaviour of materials. 
 
While quantum mechanics is currently our best theory of nature at an atomic scale, it has many puzzling qualities - qualities that preclude realism and therefore give an incomplete description of nature. Rather than question this version of quantum mechanics, however, whole groups of physicists have embraced it as correct and rejected realism. Subscribing to a kind of magical thinking, they believe that what is real is far beyond the world we perceive: indeed, that the 'true' world is hidden from our perception. 
 
Back in the 1920s Einstein, both a realist and a physicist, believed that it was necessary to go beyond quantum mechanics to discover what was missing from a true theory of the atoms. This was Einstein's unfinished mission, and it is Lee Smolin's too. 
 
Not only will this new model of quantum physics form the basis of solutions to many of the outstanding problems of physics, but, crucially, it is a theory that is realist in nature. At a time when science is under attack, and with it the belief in a real world in which facts are either true or false, never has the importance of building science on the correct foundations been more urgent.

Lee Smolin

Praise for Einstein's Unfinished Revolution

A masterful exposition on the state of quantum physics ... spellbinding

Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever formulated. The only problem with it, argues Lee Smolin, is that it is wrong. He attempts to examine other options for a theory of the atomic world ... a ...

An inventive and provocative thinker, as well as an engaging writer ... lucid, searingly honest, impassioned, inspiring

A masterful exposition on the state of quantum physics ... spellbinding

Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever formulated. The only problem with it, argues Lee Smolin, is that it is wrong. He attempts to examine other options for a theory of the atomic world ... a ...

An inventive and provocative thinker, as well as an engaging writer ... lucid, searingly honest, impassioned, inspiring

A masterful exposition on the state of quantum physics ... spellbinding

Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever formulated. The only problem with it, argues Lee Smolin, is that it is wrong. He attempts to examine other options for a theory of the atomic world ... a ...

An inventive and provocative thinker, as well as an engaging writer ... lucid, searingly honest, impassioned, inspiring

Books by Lee Smolin

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