I think we can all agree that I’ve been admirably restrained with respect to talking about my upcoming book before it even appears. (Maybe you don’t think so, but believe me — I’ve been restraining myself.) Die-hards have been able to follow the excitement at the Facebook page, where fascinating details about cover blurbs and review copies have been politely sequestered.
All that is about to end soon! Yesterday I received in the mail an actual copy of the hardcover, a tangible artifact testifying to the reality of this long-anticipated event. Here it is, rubbing shoulders with a few other well-known bestsellers.
The official release date is January 7. Yes, there will be a Kindle edition; at some point later in January there will even be an audio book. And I’m certainly not going to stop you from ordering it. But my publisher tells me that what would be really great is if a bunch of people ordered it exactly on January 7. So that’s when I’ll really be encouraging you.
Even after the book is out, I don’t want to turn the blog into all book, all the time. But I do want to try a book club experiment, where we go through individual chapters, one week at a time, with me revealing some of the thought processes that went into each chapter and all of us having a back-and-forth discussion. Should be fun!
No formal book tour, but I’ll be doing a few readings and events. Check the Facebook page or book web page for more.
“Arrow of Time” = irreversibility of causality.
Ho hum; what’s the fuss?
Only requires one sentence, not a book.
The title “From Eternity To Here” is actually a logical contradiction. Which is easily proved 🙂
Consider “From Here to Somewhere in the infinite Future”:
Make yourself immortal (no matter what happens to the universe) and count the years you live from now on: 1, 2, 3, .. n, n+1..
Now it is a fact that adding 1 to any finite number is still a finite number. So even though you live forever your age will always remain finite (for all future!). An infinite amout of time cannot pass.
You will never reach a point in time where you can say: My age is infinite!
However, the title suggest that an infinte amount of time has already passed, which is clearly impossible. Time is unable to cover infinite intervals.
@CarlN #27
The set of all integers is infinite, even though it is countable. In fact, you can count the set of all positive and negative integers with just the set of positive integers. Playing with infinity is a dangerous game.
Metre, you are playing with the mathematical infinite, not me. I carefully restrict myself only to physical time 🙂
“Paradox, pre-orders count right away, they don’t accumulate in anticipation of the release date. I certainly won’t discourage anyone from ordering the book right now, but the impact of such orders decays away gradually over time.”
Sean are you saying that pre-orders are overdamped solutions of your checking account oscillator?
Hm, a book with an illogical and unphysical title. The content might be the same.. Guess I’m not buying it 🙂
@CarlN #29:
In post #27, you used counting and adding to illustrate your argument, hence you invoked the mathematical infinity. Your argument is just a variation of Zeno’s paradox, and is invalid for the same reason – you cannot apply the logic of the finite to the infinite. Google up Hilbert’s paradox to see how finite logic does not apply to the infinite.
Dear Metre, sorry but I did not invoke the mathematical infinity. And Zeno and Hilbert are clearly irrelevant. You simply do not reach the infinite by keep adding 1 at a time to a finite number even if you do it forever. Proof: There is no finite number n such that n+1 = oo
@CarlN
OK, if that’s what you want to believe, there’s no point to further discussion.
Why don’t you formulate proofs then? Using Hilbert or whatever? Impossible if you ask me but you know better?
As usual I win the argument 🙂 But it is sad to see that the only carry-over left from religion, “Eternity”, still occurs in physics.
Wow, @CarlN I think the whole point of the title is that it is slightly illogical and paradoxical. If you see the book on a book shelf the point is to think, hmm that is interesting, why don’t I see what it is about, and perhaps you shouldn’t comment on how a title is stupid before reading the book; there might be something in the book that explains it. Would you say that saying from here to eternity is a reasonable thing to say? Because by your logic that is also completely a false claim. The whole idea of “infinity” is something that is slightly vague and undefinable. By some views, from 0 to 1 is infinite because an infinite amount of numbers is contained, yet there is certainly a beginning and an end.
Also, @metre, invoking Zeno and Hilbert is completely reasonable.
P.S. I got your back Sean… Can’t wait for the book… I love the title
Hey Sean,
Just saw the Wired article about you 🙂 Question, where can I get a blow-up beach ball of the universe??