In this volume, 12 eminent scientists and philosophers engage in fundamental, perennial questions about time: Does time exist? Is 'time' a single or multiple entity? Is it possible to reconcile contradictory notions of time, such as subjective and objective, metaphysics and physics, McTaggart's A series and B series, or presentism and eternalism? Does the Special Theory of Relativity dictate a static, deterministic account of reality ('block universe') or does it allow for 'free will'? How did the concept of geologic time originate and what are the limits of its knowledge? How is the Anthropocene defined? Each author examines these questions from the point of view of their own specialties, but without ignoring the metaphysical importance of the issue, nor the possibility that scientific advances might enforce revisions of our brain intuitive judgments.
Contents:
- Temporal Naturalism (Lee Smolin)
- J T Fraser's Paradigm Shift (Frederick Turner)
- Who is Entitled to Talk about Time and Irreversibility? (Etienne Klein)
- Time, Free Will, and Modern Physics (Christophe Bouton)
- Rethinking Time and Determinism: What Happens to Determinism When You Take Relativity Seriously (Jenann Ismael)
- The Present's Specificity (Michel Weber)
- Presentism: Past and Future (Jonathan Tallant and David Ingram)
- Does the Past Exist? (Francis Wolff)
- Deep Time: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (Max Dresow)
- Time in Historical Science (Carol E Cleland and Joseph Wilson)
- Time and the Question of the Anthropocene (Jan Zalasiewicz and Colin Waters)
Readership: Scholars in the Natural Sciences and Philosophy of Science, as well as lay-readers interested in scientific ideas of time and their philosophical implications.
Key Features:
- Prominent scientists and philosophers of science address contemporary debates on the nature of Time from their own perspective but taking into considerations other key aspects. Their contributions freely discuss its unity and reality, its compatibility with the orders of classical philosophy (present, past and future) and with the disputed idea of free will
