The Image of Eternity: Roots of Time in the Physical World

"What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know." Thus wrote St. Augustine over fifteen hundred years ago. And this paradox has troubled the human mind since man first began to think about time. Now distinguished physicist and noted writer David Park shows us how far we have come on a journey of discovery that begins with the ancient Egyptians and extends deep into te universe of modern quantum mechanics - a journey that includes the extraordinary farseeing speculations ot the Greeks, the mystery and meaning of Stonehenge, the monumental achievements of Newton, the epoch-making theories of Einstein. With wit, authority, and clarity, he reveals to us both the near-maddening gulf and truly marvelous connection between time as we personally experience it and the time as scientists have come to see it, thus opening the way to a new understanding of the fourth dimension and its complex relation to human existence.