Temporal naturalism

DOI10.1016/J.SHPSB.2015.03.005MaRDI QIDQ905646zbMATHOpenAlexFDO

Authors Lee Smolin

Publication date 27 January 2016

Published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part B. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8539

zbMATH Keywords

timecosmologyphilosophy of cosmology

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Physics (00A79) Relativistic cosmology (83F05)

Abstract: Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in physics. These disagreements do not much affect the ordinary practice of science which is about small subsystems of the universe, described or explained against a background, idealized to be fixed. But these issues become crucial when we consider including the whole universe within our system, for then there is no fixed background to reference observables to. I argue here that the key issue responsible for divergent versions of naturalism and divergent approaches to cosmology is the conception of time. One version, which I call temporal naturalism, holds that time, in the sense of the succession of present moments, is real, and that laws of nature evolve in that time. This is contrasted with timeless naturalism, which holds that laws are immutable and the present moment and its passage are illusions. I argue that temporal naturalism is empirically more adequate than the alternatives, because it offers testable explanations for puzzles its rivals cannot address, and is likely a better basis for solving major puzzles that presently face cosmology and physics. This essay also addresses the problem of qualia and experience within naturalism and argues that only temporal naturalism can make a place for qualia as intrinsic qualities of matter.

Recommendations

• The formalities of temporaryism without presentness
• Laws of nature as constraints
• Putting natural time into science
• Neither presentism nor eternalism
• Unfreezing the spotlight: tense realism and temporal passage

Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1209719 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1353501 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1508564 (Why is no real title available?)
• Dynamics of the cosmological and Newton's constant
• Einstein and the history of general relativity. Based on the proceedings of the 1986 Osgood Hill Conference held in North Andover, MA, USA, May 8-11, 1986
• Einstein gravity as a 3D conformally invariant theory
• How do causes depend on us? The many faces of perspectivalism
• The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time
• The free will theorem
• The mathematical universe
• The trouble with physics. The rise of string theory, the fall of a science and what comes next.
• Time and chance
• Unification of the state with the dynamical law
• Unified dynamics for microscopic and macroscopic systems

Cited in

(8)

• The evolutionary versus the all-at-once picture of spacetime
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1312986 (Why is no real title available?)
• In search of time lost: asymmetry of time and irreversibility in natural processes
• Spatio-temporally graded causality: a model
• Laws of nature as constraints
• At the Crossroads of Three Seemingly Divergent Approaches to Quantum Mechanics
• Putting natural time into science
• Universal cosmic absolute and modern science

This page was built for publication: Temporal naturalism

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q905646)