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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement / Volume 50 / March 2002, pp 293-316
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2002
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1358246100010614 (About DOI), Published online: 12 April 2010
Papers
Can Physics Coherently Deny the Reality of Time?
Richard Healey
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.
Richard Healey is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona.
