I recently encountered, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, a review of a book called THE OPEN FUTURE. It argues for a proposition that, I believe, is broadly correct. Time is real and creative. The future is something that does not yet exist. In fact, as regular readers of this blog may remember, I believe in a "growing block" theory of reality-in-time. The past and present are both real. The present is the forward surface of a growing block, and the future is everything that the block has NOT yet reached. The book in question is written by a fellow named Patrick Todd and it costs $80 (which discourages me from purchase.) The reviewer, Mitch Green, is a professor at the University of Connecticut. I have a great deal of fondness for that institution: the flagship public university of one of the three states in which I have resided throughout all of my life, and the one in which I have spent more of it even than in NY or Massachusetts. So ... yeah Huskies! Green descr...
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It has been more than five years since I posted here about the "twin paradox," an issue raised by relativity physics. I'll link you to that discussion: http://jamesian58.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-twin-paradox.html If you follow that URL, you will find that I have only in recent days received my first comment on that post. I find this in itself fascinating. It speaks to the whole internet-postings-are-forever thing. Once you put something out, you never know when somebody who might comment interestingly about the subject will happen across it. Anyway, my correspondent gives no name for himself beyond "The Physics Guy." He is apparently using my humble observations to plug his own new blog, Physics Talk. The first three entries of "Physics Talk" are now up, and the third of them (posted December 30, 2018) deals with the twins. I'm not overly impressed. His discussion of this paradox doesn't say anything my own discussion in 2013 didn...
A recent book by Emily Thomas, a historian of philosophy, looks at four different theories about the reality and significance of time advanced by philosophers in Britain in the seventeenth century. Her breakdown is this: there was a "void theory," "idealism," "absolutism," and "relationalism." The terms are pretty close to self-explanatory, but I'll spell it out anyway. The void theory: there is no time. Idealism: time is real, and consists of mind-dependent relations. The remaining two may each come under the broader folder "realism," in that they both hold that time is real and it is not mind dependent. But they are importantly different from one another. Absolutism: time is independent of the actions of material bodies -- that is, time could be passing even if every object were staying still. Relationalism: time is real, independent of mind, but dependent on the actions of material bodies. The Absolutist view...
My own disposition, in regard to the philosophy of time, is toward the "growing block" theory. This is the view that past events remain realities, that present-moment events are also realities, but that future events are not yet real. The image is of the universe as a block with an edge on (say) the right-hand side. The block is expanding because that edge is moving ever further right, and that edge is what we call the present, or, simply, "now." Everything to the left of that edge is both static (the past is complete) and, still and forever, real. Think of the phrase "the moving finger writes." The chief alternatives to the growing-block theory are "presentism" (only the now-edge itself is real) and "eternalism" (past, present, and future are all real." I believe that time is a growing block because (1) that's what it feels like, (2) we should stick with the introspective phenomenon unless we have good reason to abandon ...
"The great theories of 20th century physics -- relativity, quantum theory, and the Standard Model [of subatomic particles] -- represent the highest achievements of physical science. They have beautiful mathematical expressions that result in precise predictions for experiments, which have been confirmed in many cases to great accuracy. And yet I have just argued that nothing along the lines of these theories can serve as a fundamental theory. This is an audacious claim in the light of their success." Another quote from the Lee Smolin book. I like the audacity. In fact, if I understand him at all, Smolin has delivered me from an intellectual cul de sac in which I have been stuck. I've been unable to accept the Big Bang as an absolute cosmic beginning, given the huge something-from-nothing stumbling block. So I have said -- in this blog and elsewhere -- that I believe some patching up of the old Steady State theory will again have its innings. But the advocates of ...
When Money Dies , by Adam Fergusson, is a well-known study of the hyperinflation of the early Weimar Republic years. Here is a passage, referring to the demands of the labor unions in late 1921 and early 1922: "It was significant enough that union demands were still for higher wages to meet rising prices rather than, before all else, stable prices and a stable currency. A few of the financially sophisticated could be heard blaming the government, and the Finance Minister in particular, but a typical view was that price went up because the foreign exchange went up, that the exchange rate went up because of speculation on the Stock Exchange, and that this was obviously the fault of the Jews. Although the price of the dollar was a matter for almost universal discussion, it still appeared to most Germans that the dollar was going up, not that the mark was falling: that the price of food and clothing was being forcibly increased daily, not that the value of money ...
I recently read a book, or much of a book, called The Philosophy of Physics , by Tim Maudlin. I say "much of it" because, quite frankly, I couldn't follow it and gave up on it well before the end. But there were parts that I believe I did understand, and on the basis thereof I can say that this was a good book to read so soon after reading Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe, as you may remember, had a quite idiosyncratic take on Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries. It was an eccentricity that for me rather vitiated his efforts to contribute to cosmology. Anyway: back to M audlin. In one portion of the book he considers at some length the "twins paradox," a puzzle arising from, and often commented upon in the context of, the theory of relativity. Here it is in my understanding, not his. An astronaut takes off for a distant spaceport, travels at near the speed of light, so time slows. Comes back. He is now only, say, 1 year older than he was when he ...