Space and Time

現代思想の基本書。身体から生命へ、生命から存在へ、そして記号から時間へと、円環的な知が織りなす一大オルギア。.

This volume contains original contributions made at the sixth session of the Minkowski Institute international conference "Nature and Ontology of Spacetime." It continues the ambition of debating open ontological and epistemological problems in the philosophy and physics of spacetime. In this volume, topics covered include the reality of Minkowski spacetime ontology, the nature of time, quantum gravitation, inertia and relativistic phenomena, as well as aspects of the mathematical structure of the special and general theory of relativity. The volume will be (...) of interest to students in philosophy of science, researchers in spacetime physics, and to any reader who wants to study contemporary issues and debates in modern philosophy and physics. (shrink)

One of the greatest achievements of modern physics is the discovery of spacetime by Hermann Minkowski. Still, talking about the ”discovery” of spacetime cannot be done without further questioning its ontological status. Did Minkowski discover a real physical substrate? What is the creative role of his scientific imagination in the process of discovery? To what extent the explanatory power of spacetime supports the conclusion that it is a true description of the physical world? I consider those questions in that paper, (...) and I claim that for Minkowski’s discovery of spacetime, imagination and explanation work together in a fictionalist strategy. I explain why there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the discovery of spacetime and its physical reality. (shrink)

후설의 현상학적 시간론을 집중 탐구하고, 칸트.베르 그송 등의 철학자들의 시간론과 비교 검토했다.

"Vorgelegt am 8. Mèarz 1996 in einer Vorstandssitzung der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitèat Frankfurt am Main."--T.p. verso.

Study of space and time with special reference to the philosophy of languages.

Das Buch diskutiert die Genese von Raum-Symbolen in Wissenschaft und Kunst. Dazu werden die Strukturen und Logiken von kollektiven und individuellen Gestaltungspraktiken von "Räumen" und ihren Konstrukteuren analysiert. Ein empirisch materialreicher Vergleich von urbaner Unterhaltungsliteratur mit Texten aus der Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie sowie der Raumplanung zeigt Gemeinsamkeiten undDifferenzen von Wissenschaft und Kunst.

In a recent paper (Berry in Eur J Phys 42: 015401, 2020), the boundaries of superoscillatory regions (the regions where a function oscillates faster than its fastest Fourier component) of waves described by the Helmholtz equation in a uniform medium were related to zeros of the quantum potential, arising in the Madelung formulation of quantum mechanics. We generalize this result, showing that the relativistic counterpart, which is, essentially, a Klein-Gordon equation, exhibits the same behaviour, but in spacetime, giving rise to (...) anomalous values for the local mass (instead of local momenta, in the classical case). This amounts to the generalization of the condition for superoscillations from the magnitude of a vector, to the norm of a four-vector. For a photon, boundaries of superoscillatory regions are surfaces on which the photon’s trajectory is locally light-like, separating time-like and space-like regions, which correspond to real and imaginary local mass, respectively. (shrink)

In the Table of Nothing, Kant includes a discussion of space and time, under the heading of relation. There, he says that space or time is an ens imaginarium, as an empty intuition without an object. Space and time are something, namely forms required for human intuition, but they are nothing in themselves that can be intuited. When we think of Kant’s broader discussions of space and time in terms of the Table of Nothing, certain puzzles emerge. The most prominent (...) of these is the relationship between space and time as transcendentally ideal and as empirically real. This chapter argues that Kant is talking about empirically real space and time in the Table of Nothing, and likewise it is empirically real space and time that serve as the ground of experience. Transcendental ideality, rather than providing the conditions for experience, is merely a negation of transcendental reality. Paying attention to this distinction illumines contours of Kant’s notion of the transcendental. Kant often discusses the transcendental in metaphysical terms, and he is often concerned with warding off such a use of transcendentality. This is true of not only space and time, but also the categories and Kant’s discussion of previous ontology. To make my case for the fundamental importance of empirically real space and time, I look at the Table of Nothing, Kant’s statements of transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, his explanation of ideality and reality in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and then compare these statements with his talk of the transcendental misuse of the categories (which have only an empirical use). (shrink)

El tema central de esta tesis de maestría en filosofía de la ciencia es el de la naturaleza de la persistencia a través del tiempo, en el contexto de nuestras mejores teorías físicas acerca del espacio-tiempo. Este problema involucra uno de los conceptos centrales en nuestra comprensión científica del mundo físico, a saber, el concepto de tiempo. La forma usual en que se plantea el problema de la persistencia involucra ciertas nociones que están conectadas con la física, pero estos supuestos (...) rara vez suelen ser formulados de manera explícita, empero, extrapolar las disputas filosóficas en torno a la naturaleza de la persistencia al contexto de espacios newtonianos, galileanos y relativistas (minkowski) no es una tarea trivial. Estos espacios son algunos de los espacios fundamentales donde ocurre la dinámica de los objetos físicos en física clásica. -/- En esta investigación he perseguido diferentes objetivos que vinculan el problema de la persistencia, las diferentes tesis que buscan resolver el problema y las estructuras espacio-temporales postuladas nuestras mejores teorías físicas: -/- 1. Articular el problema de la persistencia, así como varios supuestos de metafísica y filosofía de la ciencia indispensables para plantear la discusión, así como para formular mi solución. 2. Introducir a detalle las diversas estructuras-espacio temporales que, en nuestras mejores teorías de física, albergan a los objetos materiales persistentes. 3. Introducir herramientas formales que permitan analizar la relación de todo-parte en contextos temporales (mereología), así como las propiedades formales de la relación de ubicación que mantienen los objetos materiales con las regiones espacio-temporales. 4. Reformular las posiciones, con estas herramientas, en las estructuras espacio-temporales previamente mencionadas. 5. Ofrecer una serie de argumentos que favorecen lo que más adelante caracterizo como “perdurantismo de ubicación”, desde dos posiciones metafísicas: el unitismo, la tesis de que el tiempo y el espacio son aspectos de una sustancia más fundamental, el espacio-tiempo y el supersustantivismo, la tesis de que el espacio-tiempo y sus propiedades son suficientes para dar soporte a una ontología realista en el caso de nuestras mejores teorías físicas. -/- De esos cinco puntos me ocupo, en ese orden, en los cinco capítulos de esta investigación, con el capítulo V siendo mi contribución original a la literatura especializada sobre el tema. En los primeros capítulos (I, II) el enfoque es en presentar una serie de posiciones y asunciones estructurales en filosofía y física. En los capítulos intermedios (III, IV), hay también una presentación de posiciones filosóficas dominantes en la literatura (Balashov, 2010; Gibson y Pooley, 2006; Gilmore, 2008, 2014; Calosi y Fano, 2015; Saucedo, 2011) que acompañan a una discusión de elementos formales de mereología y postulados estructurales de las teorías naturalizadas de persistencia a través del tiempo. El capítulo V, que es mi contribución original a la discusión filosófica, integra todo lo discutido en los capítulos anteriores en una serie de argumentos que presento en favor del perdurantismo de ubicación. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This article examines the complexity of narratives of space and time which support the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, and the consequences for patients disadvantaged by deficits in social cognition or socioeconomic status in areas relating to literacy. In the context of demonstrating the significance of narratives of space and time in the diagnostic process for multiple sclerosis, the article discusses new strategies for treatment that engage the arts and humanities and presents a brief history of the disease and current diagnostic (...) criteria, before discussing the MS Society of Great Britain and Ireland's awareness and fundraising campaign from the 1980s, and Tom Kempinski's play Duet for One, inspired by the life of cellist Jacqueline du Pré. The conclusion addresses the urgency of heightening patient and clinician awareness of how the presentation, interpretation, and sharing of narrative accounts of disease influence health outcomes and makes suggestions about how to adjust for these biases. (shrink)

The idea of 'flirting' with space is central to this book. Space is conceptualised as being in constant flux as we make our way through various contexts in our daily lives, and is considered in relation to encounters with complexities and flows of material culture. This book focuses on journeys, which are perceived as dynamic processes of contemporary life and its spaces, and how creativity happens in the inter-relations of space and journeys encourage creativity. Unravelled through a range of empirical (...) case studies of journeys through and encountered with space, this book builds new critical syntheses of the intertwining of space and life. Based on investigations undertaken by the author over the past 20 years, it explores the mundane and the exotic, the 'lay' and the 'artistic', combining and inter-relating them in a diversity of time and expression, fleeting and surviving. Such investigations, using both visual and non-visual material, include examinations of allotment holding, the work of artists, caravanning and tourism, photography and parish maps. The analyses of such seemingly disparate subjects are linked together and build on each other to create a fascinating and original view of humanity's interaction with space. Included are fresh discussions of belonging, disorientation and the working of identity and play. The notion of 'gentle politics' is introduced. (shrink)

A vision of the city as a web of interactive, informational networks that turn our world into a prison-house of illusory transcendence. “Where does the city without gates begin? Perhaps inside that fugitive anxiety, that shudder that seizes the minds of those who, just returning from a long vacation, contemplate the imminent encounter with mounds of unwanted mail or with a house that's been broken into and emptied of its contents. It begins with the urge to flee and escape for (...) a second from an oppressive technological environment, to regain one's senses and one's sense of self.” —from Lost Dimension Originally written in French in 1983, Lost Dimension remains a cornerstone book in the work of Paul Virilio: the one most closely tied to his background as an urban planner and architect, and the one that most clearly anticipates the technologically wired urban space we live in today: a city of permanent transit and internalized borders, where time has overtaken space, and where telecommunications has replaced both our living and our working environments. We are living in the realm of the lost dimension, where the three-dimensional public square of our urban past has collapsed into the two-dimensional interface of the various screens that function as gateways to home, office, and public spaces, be they the flat-screen televisions on our walls, the computer screens on our desktops, or the smartphones in our pockets. In this multidisciplinary tapestry of contemporary physics, architecture, aesthetic theory, and sociology, Virilio describes the effects of today's hyperreality on our understanding of space. Having long since passed the opposition of city and country, and city and suburb, the speed-ridden city and space of today are an opposition between the nomadic and the sedentary: a web of interactive, informational networks that turn our world into a prison-house of illusory transcendence. (shrink)

English summary: Often considered as an orientation and navigation tool, maps are intended to reassure us as we navigate on the earth. But what would happen if we were travelling with maps which disorient us? There certainly is no shortage of maps, but they are not all equally reliable! Some merely reproduce reality, while others, to the contrary, invent it. In addition to external maps used by geographers-geodesists-land surveyors, there are internal maps used by cosmographers-painters-writers and, indeed, all those whose (...) lines fire the imagination, as did Michaux, who said, I want my lines to be the very phrasing of life. The maps which will concern us here are precisely those which resist the tyranny of analogy to plunge us into the mad depths of these uncertain outlines. Such memory-bereft maps leave tracks and yet refuse to follow any sort of path. In doing so, they drag us off into improbable and unknown geographies. This journey is taken by means of a dialogue woven between Michaux's poetic works and Merleau-Ponty's philosophical writings. It also provides an opportunity to clarify Maurice Blanchot's theory expressing the main theme of the following words: Thus were they walking, immobile within the movement. These unfamiliar maps afford us an occasion to advance immobile within the movement, as if to tell us that the fixation points drawn by spatial geometry consist first and foremost of the fictional points invented by geometry. French description: SOUVENT ENVISAGEE comme un instrument d'orientation et de navigation, la carte sert a nous rassurer dans notre lecture du territoire. Mais qu'adviendrait-il si l'on voyageait avec des cartes qui nous desorientaient? Les cartes sont nombreuses certes, mais elles n'ont pas toutes les memes vertus! Certaines se contentent de reproduire simplement la realite, d'autres au contraire l'inventent. Parallelement aux cartes d'exterieur des geographes-geometres-arpenteurs, il existe des cartes d'interieur des cosmographes-peintres-ecrivains, tous ceux en fait qui font rever les lignes a la maniere de Michaux qui affirmait: Je veux que mes traces soient le phrase meme de la vie. Les cartes qui retiendront notre attention ici sont justement celles qui luttent contre la tyrannie de l'analogie pour nous plonger dans les profondeurs folles de ces contours incertains. Ces cartes sans memoire effectuent des traces et se refusent a suivre toute espece de parcours. Elles nous entrainent ainsi vers des geographies improbables et inconnues. Ce voyage se fera a partir d'un dialogue tisse entre les oeuvres poetiques de Michaux et les ecrits philosophiques de Merleau-Ponty. Il sera aussi l'occasion d'eclairer la formule de Maurice Blanchot, fil conducteur des propos qui vont suivre: Ils marchaient ainsi, immobiles a l'interieur du mouvement. Les cartes inconnues nous offrent l'occasion de marcher immobile a l'interieur du mouvement comme pour nous dire que les points de fixation que la geometrie spatiale dessine sont d'abord des points de fiction que la geometrie invente. Alain Milon est professeur de philosophie a l'universite de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense. (shrink)