In Search of Time

Time surrounds us. It defines our experience of the world; it echoes through our every waking hour. Time is the very foundation of conscious experience. Yet as familiar as it is time is also deeply mysterious. We cannot see hear smell taste or touch it. Yet we do feel it―or at least we think we feel it. No wonder poets writers philosophers and scientists have grappled with time for centuries.In his latest book award-winning science writer Dan Falk chronicles the story of how humans have come to understand time over the millennia and by drawing from the latest research in physics psychology and other fields Falk shows how that understanding continues to evolve. In Search of Time begins with our earliest ancestors'' perception of time and the discoveries that led―with much effort―to the Gregorian calendar atomic clocks and leap seconds. Falk examines the workings of memory the brain''s remarkable bridge across time and asks whether humans are unique in their ability to recall the past and imagine the future. He explores the possibility of time travel and the paradoxes it seems to entail. Falk looks at the quest to comprehend the beginning of time and how time―and the universe―may end. Finally he examines the puzzle of time''s flow and the remarkable possibility that the passage of time may be an illusion.Entertaining illuminating and ultimately thought provoking In Search of Time reveals what some of our most insightful thinkers have had to say about time from Aristotle to Kant from Newton to Einstein and continuing with the brightest minds of today.