Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler The Road to Reality by Penrose The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli "For a long time, we have tried to understand th

Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler The Road to Reality by Penrose The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli "For a long time, we have tried to understand the world in terms of some primary substance. Perhaps physics, more than any other discipline, has pursued this primary substance. But the more we have studied it, the less the world seems comprehensible in terms of something that is. It seems to be a lot more intelligible in terms of relations between events. ... We therefore describe the world as it happens, not as it is. Newton's mechanics, Maxwell's equations, quantum mechanics, and so on, tell us how events happen, not how things are...we understand the world in its becoming, not in its being. Things in themselves are only events that for a while are monotonous. But only before returning to dust, everything returns to dust. The absence of time does not mean, therefore, that everything is frozen and unmoving. It means that the incessant happening that wearies the world is not ordered along a time line, is not measured by a gigantic tick-tocking. It does not even form a four-dimensional geometry. It is a boundless and disorderly network of quantum events. The world is more like Naples than Singapore. If by 'time' we mean nothing more than happening, then everything is time. There is only that which exists in time." Very influential in my teens: Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner USA by John Dos Passos Cache Lake Country by Rowlands