Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Presentism, Eternalism, and the Triviality Problem
- 2 Weak Interactions: Asymmetry of Time or Asymmetry in Time?
- 3 Presentism and the Flow of Time
- 4 Presentism and the Notion of Existence
- 5 Meyer’s Struggle with Presentism or How We Can Understand the Debate between Presentism and Eternalism
- 6 Dynamic Presentism and the Grounding Objection
- 7 Brute Past Presentism, Dynamic Presentism, and the Objection from Being-Supervenience
- 8 Entropy and the Direction of Time
- Bibliography
- Index of Subjects
- Index of Names
8 - Entropy and the Direction of Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2023
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Presentism, Eternalism, and the Triviality Problem
- 2 Weak Interactions: Asymmetry of Time or Asymmetry in Time?
- 3 Presentism and the Flow of Time
- 4 Presentism and the Notion of Existence
- 5 Meyer’s Struggle with Presentism or How We Can Understand the Debate between Presentism and Eternalism
- 6 Dynamic Presentism and the Grounding Objection
- 7 Brute Past Presentism, Dynamic Presentism, and the Objection from Being-Supervenience
- 8 Entropy and the Direction of Time
- Bibliography
- Index of Subjects
- Index of Names
Summary
This chapter tries to demonstrate that the process of the increase of entropy does not explain the asymmetry of time itself because it is unable to account for its fundamental asymmetries, that is, the asymmetry of traces (we have traces of the past and no traces of the future), the asymmetry of causation (we have an impact on future events with no possibility of having an impact on the past), and the asymmetry between the fixed past and the open future, To this end, the approaches of Boltzmann, Reichenbach (and his followers), and Albert are analyzed. It is argued that we should look for alternative approaches instead of this, namely we should consider a temporally asymmetrical physical theory or seek a source of the asymmetry of time in metaphysics. This second approach may even turn out to be complementary if only we accept that metaphysics can complement scientific research programs.
Introduction: the asymmetry of time and the asymmetry in time
One of the most fundamental features of our world is that it is strongly temporally asymmetrical: as our experience shows, we have traces of the past in our memory and around us and no traces of the future; we can have an impact on future events with no possibility of having such an impact on the past; meanwhile, the future seems to be open, while the past is fixed and cannot be changed. The problem of the direction or the asymmetry of time itself consists in answering the question of whether the world is truly temporally asymmetrical and in finding an explanation of what is responsible for this asymmetry.
Two clarification are needed here: firstly, after Sklar (1974, 1993, 1995a, b, 2005), I distinguish between the asymmetry of time and asymmetry in time. That the causation is future directed and we find only traces of the past but can affect only the future, and that the past cannot be changed while the future can be, seem to be essential features of time itself, and not this or other particular process occurring in time.
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- In Defence of a Dynamic View of Reality , pp. 145 - 157Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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