Related papers: The relativity of simultaneity and presentism
The idea of a moving present or `now' seems to form part of our most basic beliefs about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. I show in this article that presentism, the doctrine…
There has been a recent spate of essays defending presentism, the view in the metaphysics of time according to which all and only present events or entities exist. What is particularly striking about this resurgence is that it takes place…
Presentism is, roughly, the metaphysical doctrine that maintains that whatever exists, exists in the present. The compatibility of presentism with the theories of special and general relativity was much debated in recent years. It has been…
Is presentism compatible with relativity ? This question has been much debated since the argument first proposed by Rietdijk and Putnam. The goal of this text is to study the implications of relativity and quantum mechanics on presentism,…
Eternalism is the view that the past, the present and the future exist simpliciter. A typical argument in favor of this view leans on the relativity of simultaneity. The 'equally real with' relation is assumed to be transitive between…
A phenomenological explanation is presented for the physics of aberration, which is in contrast with special relativity physics. The effect of relativity is identified with an effect due to the velocity of observation being affected by the…
Eternalism is the view that all times are equally real. The relativity of simultaneity in special relativity backs this up. There is no cosmically extended, self-existing 'now'. This leads to a tricky problem. What makes statements about…
Quantum measurement predictions are consistent with relativity for macroscopic observations, but there is no consensus on how to explain this consistency in fundamental terms. The prevailing assumption is that the relativistic structure of…
It is well known that simultaneity within an inertial frame is defined in relativity theory by a convention or definition. This definition leads to different simultaneities across inertial frames and the well known principle of relativity…
Based on two previous papers, the physical meaning of synchronization and simultaneity as is presented in Einstein's Special Relativity paper of 1905 is reconsidered. We follow Einstein's argumentation to introduce a criterium of…
I present a discussion of some issues in the ontology of spacetime. After a characterisation of the controversies among relationists, substantivalists, eternalists, and presentists, I offer a new argument for rejecting presentism, the…
It is often said that the relativistic fusion of time with space rules out genuine change or ``becoming''. I offer the classical sequential growth models of causal set theory as counterexamples.
Despite the success of modern physics in formulating mathematical theories that can predict the outcome of quantum-scale experiments, the physical interpretations of these theories remain controversial. In this manuscript, we propose a new…
Special relativity theory is generalized to two or more ``maximal'' signalling speeds. This framework is discussed in three contexts: (i) as a scenario for superluminal signalling and motion, (ii) as the possibility of two or more ``light''…
This paper deals with the concept of simultaneity in classical and relativistic physics as construed in terms of group-invariant equivalence relations. A full examination of Newton, Galilei and Poincar\'e invariant equivalence relations in…
A long-standing tradition, largely present in both the physical and the philosophical literature, regards the advent of (special) relativity -- with its block-universe picture -- as the failure of any indeterministic program in physics. On…
In this paper, we endeavour to show that from the noncommutative nature of spacetime one can deduce the concept of relativity in the sense that the velocity cannot be infinite as in the case of Galilean relativity.
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
We put forward a new view of relativity theory that makes the existence of a flow of time compatible with the four-dimensional block universe. To this end, we apply the creation-discovery view elaborated for quantum mechanics to relativity…
A modest aim of this pedagogical presentation is to analyze, critically, certain fundamental physical concepts to illustrate the physical principles behind the special theory of relativity and, hence, to also illustrate the limitations of…