Related papers: Copernicanism and the Typicality in Time
It is widely accepted that temporal asymmetry is largely a cosmological problem; the task of explaining temporal asymmetry reduces in the main to that of explaining an aspect of the condition of the early universe. However, cosmologists who…
I explain the difficulty of making various concepts of and relating to probability precise, rigorous and physically significant when attempting to apply them in reasoning about objects (e.g., spacetimes) living in infinite-dimensional…
Contemporary research programs in fundamental physics appear to suggest that there could be two (physical) times---or none at all. This essay articulates these possibilities in the context of quantum gravity, and in particular of…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
The (re)introduction of $\Lambda$ into cosmology has spurred debates that touch on central questions in philosophy of science, as well as the foundations of general relativity and particle physics. We provide a systematic assessment of the…
Recent advances in observational cosmology are changing the way we view the nature of time. In general relativity, the freedom in choosing a time hypersurface has hampered the implementation of the theory. Fortunately, Hamilton-Jacobi…
This paper considers a new and deeply challenging face of the problem of time in the context of cosmology drawing on the work of Thiemann (2006, 2007). Thiemann argues for a radical response to the cosmic problem of time that requires us to…
In contemporary physics space and time are intertwined entities so that kinematical and dynamical quantities are expressed in the four-dimensional space-time. This formulation seems to contradict our every-day experience and perception…
Popular wisdom amongst theoretical physicists says that the continuum structure of spacetime is probably not elementary, but rather emergent. While many arguments to support that view arise from speculative ideas, the argument can also be…
The traditional metaphysical debate between static and dynamic views in the philosophy of time is examined in light of considerations concerning the nature of time in physical theory. Adapting the formalism of Rovelli (1995, 2004), I set…
The notion of time in cosmology is revealed through an examination of transition matrix elements of radiative processes occurring in the cosmos. To begin with, the very concept of time is delineated in classical physics in terms of…
Physicists are increasingly beginning to take seriously the possibility of laws outside the traditional time-evolution paradigm; yet our understanding of determinism is still predicated on a forwards time-evolution picture, making it…
Experience of time is one of the primordial human experiences which is deeply tied to human consciousness. But despite this intimate relation of time with human conscious experience, time has proved to be very elusive. Particularly in…
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…
In quantum mechanics time usually appears as classical parameter which means that it is treated as being essentially different from spatial coordinates that are represented by operators. On the other hand, relativity theory demands to treat…
Barbour, Hawking, Misner and others have argued that time cannot play an essential role in the formulation of a quantum theory of cosmology. Here we present three challenges to their arguments, taken from works and remarks by Kauffman,…
One of the basic peoblems of quantum cosmology is the problem of time. Various solutions have been proposed for this problem. One approach is to use the Bohmian time. Another Approach is to use the probabilistic time which was recently…
When modelling spacetime and classical physical fields, one typically assumes smoothness (infinite differentiability). But this assumption and its philosophical implications have not been sufficiently scrutinized. For example, we can appeal…
We live in a 3+1 space-time that is intended as a description of the universe with three space dimensions and one time dimension. Space-time dimensionality seems so natural that it is rarely criticized. Experiments and the highly successful…
This article aims at applying the approaches peculiar to analytic philosophy to the question about representation of the concept of time as a symbol which can reflect the bases of the modern natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.…