A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time by Adrian Bardon

Someone thought it would be a good idea to call this book A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time, no doubt as an allusion to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. The book’s focus isn’t historical, however. It’s a brief introduction to the philosophy of time, with chapters devoted to the nature of time, its direction, its passage, and a few other standard topics. Professor Bardon’s explanations of the issues are almost always clear and the book is relatively easy to read.

The most interesting aspect of the book is Bardon’s strong preference for the “static theory of time”. That’s the counter-intuitive view that the apparent passage of time is an illusion, or, more precisely, that it’s merely the result of our human perspective. The static theory isn’t new. The Greek philosopher Parmenides argued for it 2,500 years ago. J. M. E. McTaggart unhelpfully gave the name “B-series” to this conception of time, distinguishing it from the more familiar “A-series” or “dynamic theory of time” that most people accept, according to which time passes as events move from the future to the past:

The static theorist believes in change, but only understood in a way that doesn’t commit one to the passage of time: Change, on the static theory, is to be understood as merely referring to the world being timelessly one way and timelessly another way at a subsequent moment.  

The B-series places every event in the history of the universe on an unchanging timeline. On this view, it‘s appropriate to describe every event as either earlier than, later than or simultaneous with every other event. But there is no special significance to the present moment (the “now”). It’s no more descriptive to say that an event is happening “now” than to say that a location is “here” or a direction is “up”. The idea that some events are in the past or future compared to the present moment is an illusion. So far as our “block universe” is concerned, all moments in time are equally real, not just the present one.

The static view of time isn’t universally accepted, but it’s popular among physicists and philosophers. One reason Bardon accepts it is that he thinks McTaggart’s arguments for the static theory and against the passage of time are “devastating”.

I think they’re confused. For example, McTaggart and Bardon hold that it’s self-contradictory to say that an event like the 1960 World Series used to be in the future and is now in the past, since by doing so we are attributing contradictory properties (being past and being future) to the same thing (a particular event). But being past or future are relational properties that vary with time. Saying an event was future and is now past is akin to saying a person was married and is now divorced, hardly a contradiction.

Bardon also presents Einstein’s theory of special relativity as a reason for doubting that time passes. Physicists have confirmed that two observers moving at great speed relative to each other will perceive time differently. For this reason, there is no place in physics for saying that two events are truly simultaneous, or which of two events happened first, except from a particular point of view: 

If there is no privileged vantage point from which to determine the “truth” of the matter – and the whole point of relativity is that there is not – then temporal properties like past, present and future cannot possibly be aspects of reality as it is in itself. They must be subjective and perspectival in nature.

Yet the theory of relativity pertains to how events can be observed or measured, given the constant speed of light. It doesn’t tell us how reality is “in itself”; it tells us how reality is perceived. Just because we can’t always know when two events occurred doesn’t mean there is no truth to the matter. A truth can be unknowable.

Furthermore, if relativity implies that there is no objective A-series past or future, it also implies that there is no objective B-series “earlier” or “later”. Bardon tries to draw a distinction between relativity’s implications for the dynamic and static theories of time, but it isn’t convincing. Perhaps the book would have been better if Bardon hadn’t so clearly taken sides.

2 thoughts on “A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time by Adrian Bardon

  1. Nice review. I’m of the opinion that time is nothing more than the observation rate (measurement rate) of the disipation of energy in a medium as measured from within that medium. It is entirely relative to position within the medium and between oberver and energy.

    The faster that an observer moves through the medium the slower that energy appears to dissipate relative to the observer, where the medium for humans is the Higgs field though I suspect it is more complex than simply the Higgs field itself as a medium.

    What is your thoughts on what time is?

    • I really don’t have a clue. The physics is beyond me and the philosophy has never convinced me one way or the other. My simple thought is that time is the rate of change and to deny the passage of time is to deny that change occurs. I have a lot of trouble understanding why many thinkers believe that every event in the history of the universe is equally real, which seems to deny that real change ever happens.

Comments are closed.