Showing results for "Knowledge and Time" in Science & Engineering

Three of the most important words in science are I don't know. Not knowing implies a universe of opportunities—the possibility of discovery and surprise. Our understanding of science has advanced immeasurably over the last 500 years, yet many fundamental mysteries of existence persist: How did our universe begin? How big is the universe? Is time travel possible? What’s at the center of a black hole? How did life on Earth arise? Are we alone? What is consciousness, and can we create it?

A system can describe what we see (the solar system), operate a computer (Windows 10), or be made on a page (the 14 engineered lines of a sonnet). In this book, Clifford Siskin shows that system is best understood as a genre - a form that works physically in the world to mediate our efforts to understand it. Indeed, many Enlightenment authors published works they called "system" to compete with the essay and the treatise.

Time rules our lives. We wake, eat, work, and sleep on the clock. Our days unfold in a standardized symphony of alarm clocks, school buzzers, and meeting timers. Meanwhile, global positioning satellites measure time in millionths of seconds, and financial trades circle the planet at the speed of light. Time-keeping is among the greatest accomplishments of the human species – but somewhere along the way, we made a fundamental miscalculation: we began to mistake our clocks for time itself. Deep Time is a new series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge ...