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Full Idea
I believe that it is a fundamental, irreducible fact about the spatio-temporal structure of the world that time passes.
Gist of Idea
I believe the passing of time is a fundamental fact about the world
Source
Tim Maudlin (The Metaphysics within Physics [2007], 4)
Book Ref
Maudlin,Tim: 'The Metaphysics within Physics' [OUP 2007], p.107
A Reaction
Worth quoting because it comes from a philosopher fully informed about, and heavily committed to, the physicist's approach to reality. One fears that physicists steeped in Einstein are all B-series Eternalists. Get a life!
| 14525 | Stoics say time is incorporeal and self-sufficient; Epicurus says it is a property of properties of things [Epicurus] |
| 13311 | Does time exist on its own? Did anything precede it? Did it pre-exist the cosmos? [Seneca] |
| 22915 | Newton needs intervals of time, to define velocity and acceleration [Newton, by Le Poidevin] |
| 22893 | Newton thought his laws of motion needed absolute time [Newton, by Bardon] |
| 17012 | Time exists independently, and flows uniformly [Newton] |
| 14012 | Absolute time, from its own nature, flows equably, without relation to anything external [Newton] |
| 5536 | If space and time exist absolutely, we must assume the existence of two pointless non-entities [Kant] |
| 16921 | If all empirical sensation of bodies is removed, space and time are still left [Kant] |
| 24141 | Having a sense of time presupposes absolute time [Nietzsche] |
| 12689 | Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| 18279 | Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa] |
| 16264 | I believe the passing of time is a fundamental fact about the world [Maudlin] |
| 14013 | Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne] |