What is time? The 5th-century philosopher St Augustine famously said that he knew what time was, so long as no one asked him. Is time a fourth dimension similar to space or does it flow in some sense? And if it flows, does it make sense to say how fast? Does the future exist? Is time travel possible? Why does time seem to pass in only one direction? These questions and others are among the deepest and most subtle that one can ask, but Introducing Time presents them - many for the first time - in an easily accessible, lucid and engaging manner, wittily illustrated by Ralph Edney.

A storehouse of useful, interesting, and curious knowledge about time and its reckoning, based on the premise that every day is memorable. The book is in two parts: an authoritative survey of the calendar year, and a section on the measurement of time and the calculation of movable feasts. It is illustrated with 16 pages of black-and-white plates.

A Companion to the Philosophy of Time presents the broadest treatment of this subject yet; 32 specially commissioned articles - written by an international line-up of experts provide an unparalleled reference work for students and specialists alike in this exciting field. * The most comprehensive reference work on the philosophy of time currently available * The first collection to tackle the historical development of the philosophy of time in addition to covering contemporary work * Provides a tripartite approach in its organization, covering history of the philosophy of time, time as a feature of the physical world, and time as a feature of experience * Includes contributions from both distinguished, well-established scholars and rising stars in the field

Modern physics has revealed a universe that is a much stranger place than we could have imagined, filled with black holes and dark matter and parallel lines meeting in space. And the puzzle at the center of our present understanding of the universe is time.
Now, in The Labyrinth of Time, Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. A brilliant writer, Lockwood illuminates the philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel, in a book that is both challenging and great fun. Indeed, he provides the most careful, lively, and up-to-date introduction to the physics of time and the structure of the universe to be found anywhere in print. He guides us step by step through relativity theory and quantum physics, introducing and explaining the ground-breaking ideas of Newton and Boltzmann, Einstein and Schroedinger, Penrose and Hawking. We zoom in on the behavior of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed.
Lockwood's aim is not just to boggle the mind but to lead us towards an understanding of the science and philosophy. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time.
A model of balance and clarity.
--Paul Davies, Times Higher Education Supplement

Why should there be anything at all? Why, in particular, should a material world exist? Bede Rundle advances clear, non-technical answers to these perplexing questions. If, as the theist maintains, God is a being who cannot but exist, his existence explains why there is something rather than nothing. However, this can also be explained on the basis of a weaker claim. Not that there is some particular being that has to be, but simply that there has to be something or other. Rundle proffers arguments for thinking that that is indeed how the question is to be put to rest. Traditionally, the existence of the physical universe is held to depend on God, but the theist faces a major difficulty in making clear how a being outside space and time, as God is customarily conceived to be, could stand in an intelligible relation to the world, whether as its creator or as the author of events within it. Rundle argues that a creator of physical reality is not required, since there is no alternative to its existence. There has to be something, and a physical universe is the only real possibility. He supports this claim by eliminating rival contenders; he dismisses the supernatural, and argues that, while other forms of being, notably the abstract and the mental, are not reducible to the physical, they presuppose its existence. The question whether ultimate explanations can ever be given is forever in the background, and the book concludes with an investigation of this issue and of the possibility that the universe could have existed for an infinite time. Other topics discussed include causality, space, verifiability, essence, existence, necessity, spirit, fine tuning, and laws of Nature. Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing offers an explanation of fundamental facts of existence in purely philosophical terms, without appeal either to theology or cosmology. It will provoke and intrigue anyone who wonders about these questions.

Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. And he provides the most careful, lively, and up-to-date introduction to the physics of time and the structure of the universe.He guides us step by step through relativity theory and quantum physics, introducing and explaining the ground-breaking ideas of Newton and Boltzmann, Einstein and Schroedinger, Penrose and Hawking. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Lockwood's aim is not just to boggle the mind but to lead us towards an understanding of the science and philosophy. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time.

G. J. Whitrow (1912-2000) begins this classic exploration of the nature of time with a story about a Russian poet, visiting London before the First World War. The poet's English was not too good and when he asked a man in the street, 'Please, what is time?' he received the response, 'But that's a philosophical question. Why ask me?'.
Starting from this simple anecdote, Professor Whitrow takes us on a good-humored and wide-ranging tour of the thing that clocks keep (more or less). He discusses how our ideas of time originated; how far they are inborn in plants and animals; how time has been measured, from sundial and hourglass to the caesium clock, and whether time possesses a beginning, a direction, and an end. He coaxes the diffident layman to contemplate with pleasure the differences between cyclic, linear, biological, cosmic, and space-time, and he provides frequent diversions into fascinating topics such as the Mayan calendar, the migration of birds, the dances of bees, precognition, and the short, crowded lives of mu-mesons, particles produced by cosmic-ray showers that exist for just two millionths of a second.
This reissue of the classic and authoritative What is Time? includes a new introduction by Dr J. T. Fraser, founder of the International Society for the Study of Time, and a bibliographic essay by Dr Fraser and Professor M. P. Soulsby of the Pennsylvania State University.

Until the nineteenth century all time was local time. On foot or on horseback, it was impossible to travel fast enough to care that noon was a few minutes earlier or later from one town to the next. The invention of railways and telegraphs, however, created a newly interconnected world where suddenly the time differences between cities mattered. The Clocks Are Telling Lies is an exploration of why we tell time the way we do, demonstrating that organizing a new global time system was no simple task. Standard time, envisioned by railway engineers such as Sandford Fleming, clashed with universal time, promoted by astronomers. When both sides met in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, to debate the best way to organize time, disagreement abounded. If scientific and engineering experts could not agree, how would the public? Following some of the key players in the debate, Scott Johnston reveals how people dealt with the contradictions in global timekeeping in surprising ways - from zealots like Charles Piazzi Smyth, who campaigned for the Great Pyramid to serve as the prime meridian, to Maria Belville, who sold the time door to door in Victorian London, to Moraviantown and other Indigenous communities that used timekeeping to fight for autonomy. Drawing from a wide range of primary sources, The Clocks Are Telling Lies offers a thought-provoking narrative that centres people and politics, rather than technology, in the vibrant story of global time telling.

Palmer deftly explains biological timekeepers in humans and animals, explaining jet lage and how to avoid it, and the wide range of effects of our biological clocks on our behaviour and health.

What happens when the country's greatest logician meets the century's greatest physicist? In the case of Kurt Godel and Albert Einstein the result in Godel's revolutioinary new model of the cosmos. In the 'Godel Universe' the philosophical fantasy of time travel becomes a scientific reality. For Godel, however, the reality of time travel signals the unreality of time. If Godel is right, the real meaning of the Einstein revolution had remained, for half a century, a secret. Now, half-century after Godel met Einstein, the real meaning of time travel in the Godel universe can be revealed.