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Atemporal Processes in Physics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Richard Schlegel
Richard Schlegel*
Affiliation:
Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.
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Extract

It can scarcely be said to be a self-contradictory property to be in two places at the same time any more than for an object to be at two times in the same place. The perplexities of the quantum theory of energy sometimes seem to suggest that the possibility ought not to be overlooked; …

A. S. Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation, Cambridge, 1920

There are three elements involved in physical time. The most primitive of the three is the fact of extension in time. We express this fact by saying that things “endure” in time, or by saying that the universe is not an event of one moment only. Extension in time is such a fundamental and pervasive element of our experience, that we can hardly define it other than by denotatively indicating it. Time extension is basic to the other two elements of time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , January 1948 , pp. 25 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1948

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References

1 Zemansky, Heat and Thermodynamics, 2nd. edition, p. 131.

2 The fact that a single photon goes through an optical system as a spreading wave front is shown by the experiments of Dempster on isolated photons. See Dempster and Batho, Phys. Rev., 30, 644 (1927).

3 Principles of Quantum Mechanics, 2nd. edition, Oxford, 1930, p. 2.