The Philosophy of Space and Time
INSTRUCTOR: Eric Winsberg
OFFICE: FAO 205
PHONE: 974-4635
(if you need to reach me, email is better in most cases.)
E-MAIL: winsberg@cas.usf.edu
OFFICE HOURS: M 1-2, W 2-3, and by appointment.
CLASS TIME: W 3-6
Course Description: In this course we will examine philosophical issues involving space and time, and their 20th century offspring, spacetime. What is space? Is space a thing, like a star? Is it a ‘container’ in which objects and events live? Or is space nothing but the relative distances we can measure between different objects? What is the geometry of space? How do we come to know it? How have the theories of relativity come to influence the answers we give to these questions? Similar questions can be asked about time. But, in other ways, time is unlike space: We can move around in space in any direction we please, but move inexorably forward with the march of time.
The first set of issues we will discuss concern the question whether time is ‘real.’ Time appears to consist of past, present and future. But do the past and the future exist in the same way as the present or is only the present real? Does time ‘flow’? In what ways is time different from space? What would it be to ‘spatialize’ time? Next we will ask whether certain views of time imply that there can be no freedom of the will. One might worry that if facts about the future (including facts about what I will do tomorrow) already existed in the same way as facts about the present exist, then I could not be free to choose what I will do. After all, how can I be free to decide to skip class tomorrow, if it is ‘already’ a fact today that I will attend class? What, if anything, is the connection between various views of time and ‘fatalism’?
Other topics will include the possibility of backward causation and time travel, and the anisotropy of time.
Requirements:
1) Presentation. Each student will make a class presentation addressing one central point of that week’s readings. The presentation will be based on a paper of approximately 6-7 pages which will be due by email by 5pm on the Sunday before class. Student are required to meet with me on the following Monday to discuss any revisions they should make before the Wednesday presentation. (25% of grade).
2) Seminar participation. Students are required to come to class having carefully read all the assigned readings, and prepared to discuss them as active members of the seminar. (25%)
3) Seminar paper. A major seminar paper of 12-15 pages will be due no later than Wednesday of finals week. Topics for the seminar paper will be decided in consultation with the instructor.
TEXTS: (required)
Nick Huggett, Space: From Zeno to Einstein (H).
Other suggested volumes will be discussed in class. All other readings will be made available by the instructor.
This is a rough guide to the readings. The time we spend on each topic might change, depending on interest.
Space
Week 1) Zeno’s Paradoxes:
Zeno (H).
Week 2) History of Space up to Newton (Subtantivalism)
Aristotle (H)
Descartes (H)
Newton (H)
Week 3) Newton’s critics (Relationism)
Leibniz and Clark (H)
Berkeley (H)
Mach (H)
Sklar, “Space, Time and Motion” (pp. 11-25)
(further readings: Sklar: “Space, Time, and Spacetime”, Ch. 3, A-C.)
Week 4) Kant’s defense of Newton—Incongruous Counterparts
Kant and Handedness (H)
Sklar: “Incongruous Counterparts, Intrinsic Features, and the Substantiviality of Space.”
Week 5) The Epistemology of Geometry
Euclid (H)
Poincare (H).
Sklar, “Space, Time and Motion” (pp. 40-69).
Spacetime
Week 6-7) The Special Theory of Relativity:
Einstein Taylor and Wheeler; Spacetime Physics, Chapter 1 Huggett, Neo-Newtonian Spacetime.
Sklar, “Space, Time and Motion” (pp. 25-40, 73-76).
•Callender, pp. 52-67 pp. 89-93
(further reading: Taylor and Wheeler; Spacetime Physics, chapters 2-7)
Time
Week 8) The moving now and the reality of time.
Mc Taggart, “The Unreality of Time,”
Dummett, “A Defense of McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time”
Horwich, Asymmetries in Time, chapter 2
Callender, Time pp. 32-51
Week 9) Fatalism
Aristotle, De Interpretatione, ch. 9
R. Taylor, “Fatalism”
Smith & Oaklander, “Fatalism and tenseless Time”
Week 10) Flowing time, etc.
D. C. Williams, “The Myth of Passage
Maudlin, T. “Remarks on the Passing of Time” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society volume CII (part 3)., pp. 237-252
(go to: http://www.lib.umd.edu/ETC/EJNLS/ejnls.php3)
Week 11 Reverse Causation
Dummet “Bringing about the Past”
Horwich, Chapter 6
Week 12 Time Travel
Callender, pp. 68-88
D. Lewis, “The Paradoxes of Time Travel”
Horwich, Chapter 7.
R. Heinlein, “All you Zombies” (For fun!)