Arguments of Time

These nine essays, commissioned on the initiative of the Philosophy section of the British Academy, address fundamental questions about time in philosophy, physics, linguistics, and psychology. Are there facts about the future? Could we affect the past? In physics, general relativity and quantum theory give contradictory treatments of time. So in the current search for a theory of quantum gravity, which should give way: general relativity or quantum theory? In linguistics and psychology, how does our language represent time, and how do our minds keep track of it?Table of ContentA Century of Time; The Metaphysics of Time; Can There be a Literary Philosophy of Time?; On Relativity, Time Reckoning and the Topology of Time Series; The Development of Machian Themes in the Twentieth Century; On the Emergence of Time in Quantum Gravity; The Problem of Time in Quantum Geometrodynamics; Tense, Indexicality and Consequence; The Perception of Time: Philosophical Views and Psychological EvidenceReview QuoteFruitful ideas raised in each chapter of this book. It serves as an admirable introduction to recent work on what the editor rightly calls "a controversial topic in present-day fundamental physics" Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics