Relativity and the a-theory
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(Accepted version)
Date
2021
Authors
Eagle, A.
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Knox, E.
Wilson, A.
Wilson, A.
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Book chapter
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The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics, 2021 / Knox, E., Wilson, A. (ed./s), Ch.7, pp.86-98
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Antony Eagle
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Abstract
The special theory of relativity (STR) is widely supposed to be in tension with theories of time which gives a special significance to the present moment. This chapter considers A-theoretic responses which accept STR, so far as it goes, but take it to be incomplete with respect to tensed facts. STR is a theory of the geometrical structure of space and time together: Minkowski spacetime. The theory postulates an underlying manifold of spacetime points. A model of STR yields a tenseless mosaic or manifold of all that happens and the spatiotemporal relations between these happenings. The A-theoretic picture of a wave of simultaneous happenings that sweeps through time, grounding tense in the four-dimensional manifold, is not straightforwardly compatible with STR, a tension dramatized by attempts to locate or impose a relation of absolute simultaneity on Minkowski spacetime. Conciliatory approaches trace the problems for the A-theory to the fact that each point of spacetime is part of many moments of time
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© 2022 Taylor & Francis. The right of Eleanor Knox and Alastair Wilson to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.