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Single Idea 12689

[filed under theme 27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / a. Absolute time ]

Full Idea

Cosmologists have a concept of objective simultaneity, which they take to mean something like 'temporally equidistant from the Big Bang'.

Gist of Idea

Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang

Source

Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6)

Book Ref

Ellis,Brian: 'The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism' [Acument 2009], p.124


A Reaction

I find this very appealing, when faced with all the relativity theory that tells me there is no such thing as global simultaneity, a claim which I find deeply counterintuitive, but seems to have the science on its side. Bravo.


The 13 ideas with the same theme [time is a real and unchanging backdrop to nature]:

Stoics say time is incorporeal and self-sufficient; Epicurus says it is a property of properties of things [Epicurus]
Does time exist on its own? Did anything precede it? Did it pre-exist the cosmos? [Seneca]
Newton needs intervals of time, to define velocity and acceleration [Newton, by Le Poidevin]
Newton thought his laws of motion needed absolute time [Newton, by Bardon]
Time exists independently, and flows uniformly [Newton]
Absolute time, from its own nature, flows equably, without relation to anything external [Newton]
If space and time exist absolutely, we must assume the existence of two pointless non-entities [Kant]
If all empirical sensation of bodies is removed, space and time are still left [Kant]
Having a sense of time presupposes absolute time [Nietzsche]
Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang [Ellis]
Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa]
I believe the passing of time is a fundamental fact about the world [Maudlin]
Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne]