Time and Space: Second Edition

✍ Scribed by Barry Francis Dainton

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 481
• Edition: Second edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Surveying both historical debates and modern physics, Barry Dainton evaluates the central arguments in a clear and unintimidating way that keeps conceptual issues comprehensible to students with little scientific or mathematical training and makes the philosophy of space and time accessible to anyone trying to come to grips with the complexities of this challenging subject. With over 100 original line illustrations and a full glossary of terms, Time and Space keeps the requirements of students firmly in sight and will continue to serve as the ideal textbook for philosophy of time and space courses.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface to the second edition
Preface to the first edition
1. Preliminaries
1.1 Ontology: the existence of space and time
1.2 Questions of structure
1.3 Physics and metaphysics
1.4 Time: the great divide
1.5 Two frameworks
1.6 Matters terminological
2. McTaggart on time's unreality
2.1 Could time be unreal?
2.2 Change as the essence of time
2.3 McTaggart's A-paradox
2.4 Other routes to the same place
2.5 The nature of A-properties
2.6 The overdetermination problem
2.7 Consequences
3. The Block universe
3.1 Time without passage
3.2 Passage and experience
3.3 A-truth in a B-world
3.4 Another A-paradox
3.5 The indispensability of the A-framework
3.6 Questions of attitude
3.7 B-theories of change
3.8 Emergent time
4. Asymmetries within time
4.1 The direction of time
4.2 Content-asymmetries: a fuller picture
4.3 Entropy
4.4 The causal route
4.5 Causation in question
4.6 Time in reverse
4.7 Fundamental forks
5. Tensed time
5.1 Tense versus dynamism
5.2 Taking tense seriously
5.3 McTaggart revisited
5.4 Is tense enough?
6. Dynamic time
6.1 The Growing Block
6.2 Overdetermination
6.3 Dynamism without tense
6.4 The thinning tree
6.5 How can a block grow?
6.6 The eternal past
6.7 The varieties of Presentism
6.8 Solipsistic Presentism
6.9 Many-Worlds Presentism
6.10 Dynamic Presentism
6.11 Compound Presentism
7. Time and consciousness
7.1 The micro-phenomenology of time
7.2 Memory based accounts
7.3 The pulse theory
7.4 Awareness and overlap
7.5 The two-dimensional model
7.6 The overlap theory
7.7 The phenomenal arrow
7.8 Further consequences
8. Time travel
8.1 Questions of possibility and paradox
8.2 Misconceptions and multidimensions
8.3 Self-defeating loops
8.4 Global consistency constraints
8.5 Bilking
8.6 Quantum retroaction
8.7 The inexplicable
8.8 Voyaging in dynamic time
8.9 Real time
9. Conceptions of void
9.1 Space as void
9.2 The unseen constrainer
9.3 Connection in question
9.4 Substantivalism: a closer look
9.5 Relationism: a closer look
9.6 Two concepts of distance
9.7 Two conceptions of motion
9.8 Matters terminological
10. Space: the classical debate
10.1 The last of the magicians
10.2 Galileo
10.3 Descartes
10.4 Leibniz
10.5 The argument from indiscernibility
10.6 The argument from sufficient reason
10.7 The methodological argument
11. Absolute motion
11.1 Inertial motion
11.2 The argument for real inertial motions
11.3 The argument from inertial effects
11.4 Stalemate?
11.5 The Leibnizian response
11.6 The Machian response
11.7 The Sklar response
12. Motion in spacetime
12.1 Newtonian spacetime
12.2 Neo-Newtonian spacetime
12.3 The only reasonable view?
12.4 A threat vanquished
12.5 The charge of explanatory impotence
12.6 A rebuttal
12.7 Newtonian spacetime relationism
12.8 Neo-Newtonian spacetime relationism
12.9 Relationism redux
13. Curved space
13.1 New angles on old problems
13.2 Flat and curved spaces
13.3 The fifth postulate
13.4 Intrinsic curvature
13.5 Topology
13.6 Conventionalism
13.7 Realism versus anti-realism
14. Tangible space
14.1 Manifestations of curvature
14.2 The detachment thesis
14.3 The explanatory challenge
14.4 A solitary hand
14.5 Global structures
15. Spatial anti-realism
15.1 Foster on matter and space
15.2 The intrinsic and the inscrutable
15.3 Modes of deviancy
15.4 Intrinsic versus functional geometry
15.5 The nomological thesis
15.6 Nomological contingency
15.7 Realism rejected
15.8 Geometrical pluralism
16. Zeno and the continuum I
16.1 Motion and the continuum
16.2 Numbering the continuum
16.3 The "Dichotomy"
16.4 The paradox of plurality
16.5 Cantor's continuum
16.6 Plurality, measure and metric
16.7 The Dichotomy revisited
Appendix
17. Zeno and the continuum II
17.1 The "Arrow"
17.2 Velocity as intrinsic
17.3 The "Stadium"
17.4 Could our spacetime be discrete?
17.5 The standard continuum: basic concerns and further puzzles
17.6 Are more points the answer?
17.7 Extension as fundamental
18. Special relativity
18.1 Time, space and Einstein
18.2 Lightspeed
18.3 Compensation or revolution?
18.4 Simultaneity
18.5 Minkowski spacetime
19. Relativity and reality
19.1 Reality unconfined
19.2 Compatibilism
19.3 Time fragmented
19.4 Absolute simultaneity: the quantum connection
20. General relativity
20.1 The limits of STR
20.2 Equivalence
20.3 Spacetime curvature
20.4 Feeling the grip of spacetime
20.5 Evidence
20.6 Equations
20.7 Relativistic cosmology
21. Spacetime metaphysics
21.1 Substantival spacetime
2 1.2 Mach's Principle
21.3 The hole argument
21.4 Metrical essentialism
21.5 An outmoded debate?
21.6 GTR and time
22. Strings
22.1 Higher dimensions
22.2 Kaluza-Klein theory
22.3 The standard model
22.4 Strings
22.5 Calabi-Ydu space
22.6 Branes and bulk
22.7 Shards
Notes
Glossary
Web resources
Bibliography
Index