'Two sentences in Carlo Rovelli’s most recent book White Holes came to mind when reading Stephen Edgar’s new and highly impressive Ghosts of Paradise. The first is something that perhaps one wouldn’t expect from a theoretical physicist: ‘time is not a map of reality: it is a kind of memory storage device…’ And the second is something equally unexpected from someone who, like Rovelli, has published numerous books: ‘…the real purpose of language is not to communicate. It is to get close to things, to be in relation with them.’' (Introduction)