These pages provide an introduction to my book, Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point , published by Oxford University Press, New York, in March, 1996. The Table of Contents and Chapter 1 are accessible here, as are the jacket blurb and comments, and the book's listing in OUP's on-line catalogues in New York and Oxford. There are also some reviews and on-line discussions of the book. Huw Price 13 January, 1997. In this important and accessible book, Huw Price throws fascinating new light on these mysteries of modern physics, and connects them in a wholly original way.
Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time.
Price shows that, for over a century, most physicists have thought about these problems the wrong way. To avoid this fallacy, Price argues, we need to overcome our natural tendency to think about the past and the future differently. Price then turns to the greatest mystery of modern physics, the meaning of quantum theory. He argues that in missing the Archimedean viewpoint, modern physics has missed a radical and attractive solution to many of the apparent paradoxes of quantum physics. Price shows that these paradoxes can be avoided by allowing that at the quantum level the future does, indeed, affect the past.