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Can Physics Coherently Deny the Reality of Time?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2010

Richard Healey
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Extract

The conceptual and technical difficulties involved in creating quantum theory of gravity have led some physicists to question, and even in some cases to deny, the reality of time. More surprisingly, this denial has found a sympathetic audience among certain philosophers of physics. What should we make of these wild ideas? Does it even make sense to deny the reality of time? In fact physical science has been chipping away at common sense aspects of time ever since its inception. Section 1 offers a brief survey of the demolition process. Section 2 distinguishes a tempered from an extreme-y l radical form that a denial of time might take, and argues that extreme radicalism is empirically self-refuting. Section 3 begins an investigation of the prospects for tempered radicalism in a timeless theory of quantum gravity.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 50 , March 2002 , pp. 293 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2002

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