Lee Smolin: Quotes about time

“Neither space nor time has any existence outside the system of evolving relationships that comprises the universe. Physicists refer to this feature of general relativity as background independence.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Universe , Time

“I… propose that time and its passage are fundamental and real and the hopes and beliefs about timeless truths and timeless realms are mythology.”

Lee Smolin

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Truth , Hope , Time

“Time is described only in terms of change in the network of relationships that describes space.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Change , Time

“There are unfortunately not a few good professional physicists who still think about the world as if space and time had an absolute meaning.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

World , Thinking , Time

“The relational picture of space and time has implications that are as radical as those of natural selection, not only for science but for our perspective on who we are and how we came to exist in this evolving universe of relations.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Nature , Universe , Science , Time

“One of the evident facts about the world is the stability of empty space-time. In classical general relativity we can explain this as a consequence of the positive energy theorem… the positive energy theorem must extend in some suitable form to any viable quantum theory of gravity.”

Lee Smolin

"Positive energy in quantum gravity" arXiv (Jun 10, 2014)

World , Time

“Thinking in time is not relativism but a form of relationalism… the truest description of something consists of specifying its relationships to other parts of the system it is part of.”

Lee Smolin

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Thinking , Time , Parting

“Having begun my life in science searching for the equation beyond time, I now believe that the deepest secret of the universe is that its essence rests in how it unfolds moment by moment in time.”

Lee Smolin

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Life , Secret , Search , Universe

“We seem to have an ingrained idea that if something is valuable, it exists outside of time.”

Lee Smolin

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Idea , Time

“There is no time apart from change. There is no such thing as a clock outside the network of changing relationships. …one can only compare how fast one thing is happening with the rate of some other process.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Change , Time

“Is the flow of time something real, or might our sense of time passing be just an illusion that hides the fact that what is real is only a vast collection of memories?”

Lee Smolin

as quoted by Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (2000)

Sense , Memory , Time

“Since the 1950s, the key equation of quantum gravity has been called the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Bryce DeWitt and John Wheeler wrote it down, but in all the time since then, no one had been able to solve it. We found we could solve it exactly, and in fact we found an infinite number of exact solutions.”

Lee Smolin

Describing work with Ted Jacobson
"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Time

“In string theory one studies strings moving in a fixed classical spacetime. …what we call a background-dependent approach. …One of the fundamental discoveries of Einstein is that there is no fixed background. The very geometry of space and time is a dynamical system that evolves in time. The experimental observations that energy leaks from binary pulsars in the form of gravitational waves—at the rate predicted by general relativity to the… accuracy of eleven decimal places—tell us that there is no more a fixed background of spacetime geometry than there are fixed crystal spheres holding the planets up.”

Lee Smolin

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Study , Time , Dependency

“In the theory of electric fields it is assumed that points have meaning. …Physicists using general relativity… cannot speak of a point, except by naming some features of the field lines that will uniquely distinguish that point. …the network of relationships evolve with time… constantly changing.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Change , Time