In an age characterized by impersonality and a fear of individuality this book is indeed unusual. It is personal, individualistic and idiosyncratic - a record of the scientific adventure of a single mind. Most scientific writing today is so depersonalized that it is impossible to recognize the man behind the work, even when one knows him. Costa de Beauregard's scientific career has focused on three domains - special relativity, statistics and irreversibility, and quantum mechanics. In Time, the Physical Magnitude he has provided a personal vade mecum to those problems, concepts, and ideas with which he has been so long preoccupied. Some years ago we were struck by a simple and profound observa­ tion of Mendel Sachs, the gist of which follows. Relativity is based on very simple ideas but, because it requires highly complicated mathe­ matics, people find it difficult. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, derives from very complicated principles but, since its mathematics is straightforward, people feel they understand it. In some ways they are like the bourgeois gentilhomme of Moliere in that they speak quantum mechanics without knowing what it is. Costa de Beauregard recognizes the complexity of quantum mechanics. A great virtue of the book is that he does not hide or shy away from the complexity. He exposes it fully while presenting his ideas in a non-dogmatic way.

Inhalt

1 Generalities.- 1.1. Introductory Remarks.- 1.1.1. Modelism or formalism?.- 1.1.2. Paradox and paradigm.- 1.1.3. Utility of dimensional analysis. Universal constants.- 1.1.4. 'Very large' and 'very small' universal constants.- 1.1.5. Today's scientific humanism.- 1.1.6. Epistemology as understood in this book.- 2 Lawlike Equivalence Between Time and Space.- 2.1. More Than Two Millennia of Euclidean Geometry.- 2.1.1. 'Euclidean theory of space'.- 2.1.2. 'Is it false that overnight everything has doubled in size?'.- 2.1.3. Absolute time and classical kinematics.- 2.1.4. The classical 'principle of relative motion'.- 2.2. The Three Centuries of Newtonian Mechanics: Universal Time and Absolute Space.- 2.2.1. Remarkable aphorisms by Aristotle.- 2.2.2. Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642): celestial and terrestrial mechanics.- 2.2.3. The universal Galileo-Newtonian law$${\textbf {F}} = m{\ddot {\textbf {r}}} $$.- 2.2.4. 'Greatness and servitude' of classical mechanics.- 2.2.5. Gravitation.- 2.2.6. Symplectic manifolds and analytical mechanics.- 2.3. Three Centuries of Kinematical Optics.- 2.3.1. Fermat (1601-1665) and Huygens (1629-1695).- 2.3.2. Roemer (1976) and Bradley (1728): the two first measurements of the velocity of light.- 2.3.3. Could Bradley's discovery allow a formulation of the relativity theory?.- 2.3.4. A corollary to Bradley's aberration: photography of a fastly moving object.- 2.3.5. Arago's 1818 experiment and Fresnel's very far reaching 'ether drag' formula.- 2.3.6. 'Normal science' in optics throughout the 19th Century.- 2.3.7. In electromagnetism also there was a dormant relativity problem.- 2.3.8. Unexpected end of the hunting of the snark.- 2.4. Today's Nec Plus Ultra of Metrology and Chronometry: 'Equivalence' of Space and Time.- 2.4.1. Fundamental significance of the Michelson-Morley type of experiment.- 2.4.2. Optical metrology.- 2.4.3. Microwave chronometry.- 2.4.4. Measurements of the velocity of light.- 2.4.5. Imminent fulfilment of the old Aristotelian dream.- 2.4.6. Wonders of laser physics: the 1978 Brillet and Hall 'repetition' of the Michelson experiment.- 2.4.7. Wonders of laser physics: metrology via Doppler free spectroscopy.- 2.4.8. October 1983: The speed of light as supreme 'motion referee', and the new immaterial length standard.- 2.4.9. Wonders of laser spectroscopy: chronometry via optical heterodyning.- 2.4.10. Mossbauer effect (Heidelberg, 1957).- 2.4.11. Applied metrology, tachymetry and chronometry.- 2.5. Entering the Four-Dimensional Spacetime Paradigm.- 2.5.1. Walking through the entrance gate.- 2.5.2. Playing with hyperbolic trigonometry.- 2.5.3. On the general Lorentz-Poincaré-Minkowski transformation.- 2.5.4. On the Galileo-Newton paradigm as a limit of the Poincaré-Minkowski one.- 2.5.5. Fresnel's ether drag law as a velocity composition formula.- 2.5.6. Terrell's relativistic photography revisited.- 2.5.7. Time dilatation and the 'twins paradox'.- 2.5.8. The Harress (1912) and Sagnac (1913) effects.- 2.5.9. The problem of accelerating a solid body.- 2.5.10. Kinematics identified with vacuum optics. The restricted relativity principle as a kinematical principle.- 2.6. The Magic of Spacetime Geometry.- 2.6.1. Introduction.- 2.6.2. Invariant phase and 4-frequency vector.- 2.6.3. The 4-velocity concept.- 2.6.4. Integration and differentiation in spacetime.- 2.6.5. Invariant or scalar volume element carried by a fluid.- 2.6.6. The Green- and Stokes-like integration transformation formulas.- 2.6.7. Relativistic electromagnetism and electrodynamics.- 2.6.8. Entering relativistic dynamics.- 2.6.9. Fluid moved by a scalar pressure: a quick look at relativistic thermodynamics.- 2.6.10. Dynamics of a point particle.- 2.6.11. Isomorphism between the classical statics of filaments and the relativistic dynamics of spinning-point particles.- 2.6.12. Barycenter and 6-component angular momentum around the barycenter. The relativistic 'general theorems'.- 2.6.13. Analytical dynamics of an electrically charged point particle.- 2.6.14. Wheeler-Feynman electrodynamics.- 2.6.15. De Broglie's wave mechanics.- 2.6.16. What was so special with light, after all?.- 2.6.17 Concluding this chapter, and the Second part of the book.- 3 Lawlike Time Symmetry and Factlike Irreversibility.- 3.1. Overview.- 3.1.1. Old wisdom and deeper insights.- 3.1.2. Mathematization of gambling.- 3.1.3. Probability as data dependent.- 3.14. The Shannon-Jaynes principle of entropy maximization, or 'maxent'.- 3.1.5. 'How subjective is entropy?'.- 3.1.6. Loschmidt-like and Zermelo-like behavior in card shuffling.- 3.1.7. Laplace, the first, and profound theorist of lawlike reversibility and factlike irreversibility.- 3.1.8. Timeless causality and timeless probability.- 3.1.9. Factlike irreversibility according to Laplace, Boltzmann and Gibbs.- 3.1.10. Lawlike reversibility.- 3.1.11. Matrix conceptualization of conditional or transition probabilities.- 3.1.12. Laplacean reversal and time reversal.- 3.1.13. Markov chains in general.- 3.1.14. Factlike irreversibility as blind statistical retrodiction forbidden.- 3.1.15. Causality identified with conditional or transition probability.- 3.1.16. Concluding the chapter: a spacetime covariant, arrowless calculus of probability.- 3.1.17. Appendix: Comparison between my thesis and those of other authors having discussed the fundamentals of irreversibility.- 3.2. Phenomenological Irreversibility.- 3.2.1. Classical thermodynamics.- 3.2.2. Factlike thermodynamical irreversibility and its relevance to causality and information.- 3.2.3. Entropy increase and wave retardation.- 3.2.4. Light waves.- 3.2.5. Waves and information theory.- 3.2.6. Lawlike time symmetry and factlike time asymmetry in the Wheeler-Feynman electrodynamics.- 3.2.7. Thermal equilibrium radiation.- 3.2.8. Irreversibility and the cosmological cool oven.- 3.3. Retarded Causality as a Statistical Concept. Arrowless Microcausality.- 3.3.1. Poincaré's discussion of the little planets' ring.- 3.3.2. Boltzmann, Gibbs and thermodynamical entropies.- 3.3.3. Loschmidt's objection and Boltzmann's first inappropriate answer. Recurrence of this sort of paralogism.- 3.3.4. Retarded causality as identical to probability increase. Causality as arrowless at the microlevel.- 3.3.5. Retarded causality and registration.- 3.3.6. Zermelo's recurrence objection, and the phenomenon of spin echoes.- 3.3.7. Other instances of lawlike symmetry and factlike asymmetry between blind statistical prediction and retrodiction.- 3.3.8. Statistical mechanics: from Maxwell's three-dimensiona…