Related papers: Present time
Space and time are central concepts for understanding our World. They are important ingredients at the core of every scientific theory and subject of intense debate in philosophy. Albert Einstein's Special and General theories of Relativity…
Dennis Dieks advanced the view that the idea of flow of time is implemented in the theory of relativity. The 'flow' results from the successive happening/becoming of events along the time-like worldline of a material system. This leads to a…
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary…
The Block Universe idea, representing spacetime as a fixed whole, suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This view is however based on time-reversible…
The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found…
This paper lends perspective to the media catchphrase that <time does not exist>. To show how phrases such as this should be interpreted, we formulate some of the most important questions that arise in discussions about time in physics. We…
We review the idea, due to Einstein, Eddington, Hoyle and Ballard, that time is a subjective label, whose primary purpose is to order events, perhaps in a higher-dimensional universe. In this approach, all moments in time exist…
Special relativity is no longer a new revolutionary theory but a firmly established cornerstone of modern physics. The teaching of special relativity, however, still follows its presentation as it unfolded historically, trying to convince…
In this paper I argue that the fundamental aspect of our notion of time is that it defines an order relation, be it a total order relation between configurations of the world or just a partial order relation between events. This position is…
Theories in physics usually do not address ``the present''or ``the now''. However, they usually have a precise notion of an ``instant'' (or state). I review how this notion appears in relational point mechanics and how it suffices to…
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…
On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom.…
It is often said that in general relativity time does not exist. This is because the Einstein equations generate motion in time that is a symmetry of the theory, not true time evolution. In quantum gravity, the timelessness of general…
This paper investigates the mathematical representation of time in physics. In existing theories time is represented by the real numbers, hence their formal properties represent properties of time: these are surveyed. The central question…
This paper is a shortened version of the full paper that was published in the journal Frontiers of Psychology in May 2022. In recent decades, the scientific study of consciousness has significantly increased our understanding of this…
Most of us think we know some basic facts about how time works. The facts we believe we know are based on a few intuitions about time, which are, in turn, based on our conscious waking experiences. As far as I can tell, these intuitions…
A particular science is not only defined by its object of study, but also by the point of view and method under which it considers that same object. Taking space and time as an illustrative example, our main aim here is to bring out an…
The meaning of instantaneous action at a distance is elucidated. It is shown that the absence of a medium to transmit action (usually referred to as AAD in the literature) and instantaneous action are not identical. Since the term…
Discussion of some aspects of the concept of time for a general audience: nature of time, A- and B-series, time in physics, the "now", measurement of time, definition of time units, time's arrow, relativity of time, relativity of…
Attempts to quantize general relativity encounter an odd problem. The Hamiltonian that normally generates time evolution vanishes in the case of general relativity as a result of diffeomorphism invariance. The theory seems to be saying that…