The last century has seen enormous progress in our understanding of time. This volume features original essays by the foremost philosophers of time discussing the goals and methodology of the philosophy of time, and examining the best way to move forward with regard to the field's core issues. The collection is unique in combining cutting edge work on time with a focus on the big picture of time studies as a discipline. The major questions asked include: What are the implications of relativity and quantum physics on our understanding of time? Is the passage of time real, or just a subjective phenomenon? Are the past and future real, or is the present all that exists? If the future is real and unchanging (as contemporary physics seems to suggest), how is free will possible? Since only the present moment is perceived, how does the experience as we know it come about? How does experience take on its character of a continuous flow of moments or events? What explains the apparent one-way direction of time? Is time travel a logical/metaphysical possibility?

The last century has seen enormous progress in our understanding of time. This volume features original essays by the foremost philosophers of time discussing the goals and methodology of the philosophy of time, and examining the best way to move forward with regard to the field's core issues. The collection is unique in combining cutting edge work on time with a focus on the big picture of time studies as a discipline. The major questions asked include: What are the implications of relativity and quantum physics on our understanding of time? Is the passage of time real, or just a subjective phenomenon? Are the past and future real, or is the present all that exists? If the future is real and unchanging (as contemporary physics seems to suggest), how is free will possible? Since only the present moment is perceived, how does the experience as we know it come about? How does experience take on its character of a continuous flow of moments or events? What explains the apparent one-way direction of time? Is time travel a logical/metaphysical possibility?

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Adrian Bardon's A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time is a short introduction to the history, philosophy, and science of the study of time--from the pre-Socratic philosophers through Einstein and beyond. Bardon covers subjects such as time and change, the experience of time, physical and metaphysical approaches to the nature of time, the direction of time, time travel, time and freedom of the will, and scientific and philosophical approaches to cosmology and the beginning of time. He employs helpful illustrations and keeps technical language to a minimum in bringing the resources of over 2500 years of philosophy and science to bear on some of humanity's most fundamental and enduring questions.

As a growing area of research, the philosophy of time is increasingly relevant to different areas of philosophy and even other disciplines. This book describes and evaluates the most important debates in philosophy of time, under several subject areas: metaphysics, epistemology, physics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, rationality, and art. Questions this book investigates include the following. Can we know what time really is? Is time possible, especially given modern physics? Must there be time because we cannot think without it? What do we experience of time? How might philosophy of time be relevant to understanding the mind–body relationship or evidence in cognitive science? Can the philosophy of time help us understand biases toward the future and the fear of death? How is time relevant to art—and is art relevant to philosophical debates about time? Finally, what exactly could time travel be? And could time travel satisfy emotions such as nostalgia and regret? Through asking such questions, and showing how they might be best answered, the book demonstrates the importance philosophy of time has in contemporary thought. Each of the book’s ten chapters begins with a helpful introduction and ends with study questions and an annotated list of further reading. This and a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book prepare the reader to go further in their study of the philosophy of time.

This is the first comprehensive book on the philosophy of time. Leading philosophers discuss the metaphysics of time, our experience and representation of time, the role of time in ethics and action, and philosophical issues in the sciences of time, especially quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

Although scholarship in philosophy of action has grown in recent years, there has been little work explicitly dealing with the role of time in agency, a role with great significance for the study of action. As the articles in this collection demonstrate, virtually every fundamental issue in the philosophy of action involves considerations of time. The four sections of this volume address the metaphysics of action, diachronic practical rationality, the relation between deliberation and action, and the phenomenology of agency, providing an overview of the central developments in each area with an emphasis on the role of temporality. Including contributions by established, rising, and new voices in the field, Time and the Philosophy of Action brings analytic work in philosophy of action together with contributions from continental philosophy and cognitive science to elaborate the central thesis that agency not only develops in time but is shaped by it at every level.

In what sense does time exist? Is it an objective feature of the external world? Or is its real nature dependent on the way man experiences it? Has modern science brought us closer to the answer to St. Augustine's exasperated outcry, 'What, then, is time?' ? Ever since Aristotle, thinkers have been struggling with this most confounding and elusive of philosophical questions. How long does the present moment last? Can we make statements about the future that are clearly true or clearly false? And if so, must we be fatalists? This volume presents twenty-three discussions of the problem of time. A section on classical and modern attempts at definition is followed by four groups of essays drawn largely from contemporary philosophy, each preface with an introduction by the editor. First, in a chapter entitled 'The Static versus the Dynamic Temporal', four philosophers advance solutions to McTaggart's famous proof of time's unreality. In the next two sections, the discussion turns to the meaning of the 'open future' and to the much-debated nature of 'human time'. Finally, modern science and philosophy tackle Zeno's celebrated paradoxes. The essays by Adolf Grnbaum, Nicholas Rescher, and William Barrett are published for the first time in this volume.

Time is central to our lived experience of the world. Yet, as this book reveals, it is startlingly difficult to reconcile the way we seem to experience time with many of the theories presented to us in physics and metaphysics. This comprehensive and accessible introduction guides the unfamiliar reader through difficult questions at the intersection of the metaphysics and physics of time. It starts with the assumption that physics and metaphysics are inextricably connected, and that each can, and should, shed light on the other. The authors explore a range of views about the nature of time, showing how different these are from the way we typically think about time and our place in it. They consider such questions as: whether time travel is possible, and, if it is, whether we can change the past; whether there is a single moment that is objectively present; whether time flows or is static; and whether, ultimately, time exists at all. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time will appeal to students of physics and philosophy who want both a comprehensive overview of the area and enough depth to allow for rigorous discussion. The book’s detailed readings and exercises will challenge students and provide a clear roadmap for further study.

C. D. Broad's writing on various philosophical issues spans more than half a century. Rather than attempt to trace the development of his thought throughout these fifty years this book considers his most representative work, namely, The Mind and Its Place in Nature. Nor does the scope of this study encompass the whole of that book, but only some of the issues he discusses in it. Specifically, Oaklander considers what Broad has to say about such fundamental issues as substance, universals, relations, space, time, and intentionality in the contexts of perception, memory and introspection. L. Nathan Oaklander studied philosophy at the university of Iowa. He is a student of Gustav Bergmann, one of the most distinguished ontologist in 20th century philosophy.

One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.