Karol Jalochowski | Pioneers: Julian Barbour. Bottom’s Dream. @jalochowski | Uploaded November 2022 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Julian Barbour is an independent -- although affiliated with Oxford University -- physicist, a historian of science, author of various papers and several books. For more than thirty years, he has been removing what he believes to be unnecessary terms from the physics toolbox. One of them is time, which, according to Barbour, is an illusion. It is completely unnecessary to describe the world scientifically. In recent years, he has been working on a theory explaining where our sense of passage of time and its direction, associated with this illusion, comes from. We meet Barbour at his home in a small village near Oxford, accompanying him in his daily household chores.
Pioneers is one and only project devoted to the most unorthodox contemporary thinkers who have had the courage to challenge current paradigms. The emotions of discovering and stress-testing new theories; the passion which prompts one to go against the expectations of others, against the “publish or die” model; the joys and sorrows of exploring frontiers of the known and the unknown – this is what the series is about.
Other completed episodes of the series:
Daniel C Dennett. Do Lobsters Have Free Will?
Artur Ekert. A Model Kit.
Freeman Dyson. Space Dreamer.
Julian Barbour. Bottom’s Dream.
Roy Glauber. The Bomb that Shook the World.
Gregory Chaitin. Against Method.
Charles H. Bennett. A Drinking Bird Mystery.
Support by Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore
Julian Barbour is an independent -- although affiliated with Oxford University -- physicist, a historian of science, author of various papers and several books. For more than thirty years, he has been removing what he believes to be unnecessary terms from the physics toolbox. One of them is time, which, according to Barbour, is an illusion. It is completely unnecessary to describe the world scientifically. In recent years, he has been working on a theory explaining where our sense of passage of time and its direction, associated with this illusion, comes from. We meet Barbour at his home in a small village near Oxford, accompanying him in his daily household chores.
Pioneers is one and only project devoted to the most unorthodox contemporary thinkers who have had the courage to challenge current paradigms. The emotions of discovering and stress-testing new theories; the passion which prompts one to go against the expectations of others, against the “publish or die” model; the joys and sorrows of exploring frontiers of the known and the unknown – this is what the series is about.
Other completed episodes of the series:
Daniel C Dennett. Do Lobsters Have Free Will?
Artur Ekert. A Model Kit.
Freeman Dyson. Space Dreamer.
Julian Barbour. Bottom’s Dream.
Roy Glauber. The Bomb that Shook the World.
Gregory Chaitin. Against Method.
Charles H. Bennett. A Drinking Bird Mystery.
Support by Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore
