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McTaggart and Modern Physics

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Abstract

This paper delves into McTaggart’s metaphysical account of reality without time, and compares and contrasts McTaggart’s account with the account of reality given by modern physics. This comparison is of interest, because there are suggestions from contemporary physics that there is no time at the fundamental level. Physicists and philosophers of physics recognize that we do not have a good understanding of how the world could be such that time is unreal. I argue that, from the perspective of one who is trying to understand modern physics, McTaggart’s metaphysical views do provide some insight into how reality can be timeless at the fundamental level, but the insight that they provide is limited.

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Notes

  1. For a proof of this, see Hawking and Ellis 1973, 189–90.

  2. See Spergel et al. 2003 and Bennett et al. 2003. For an accessible discussion, see NASA (2007). To be precise, the evidence is that on a large scale, the universe is spatially flat. It is mathematically possible for the universe to be spatially flat and yet finite (as explained by for example Heckmann and Schücking (1962, 441–2)), but such non-standard topologies are usually rejected by physicists. In addition to the empirical evidence, there is theoretical support for the hypothesis that the universe is spatially infinite. Most versions of inflationary cosmology make this prediction, as explained by Linde (2000, 584–6).

  3. John Earman (2002) also suggests parallels between McTaggart and general relativity, but his argument does not take into account McTaggart’s actual views on the nature of the C-series.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Bradley Monton

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Monton, B. McTaggart and Modern Physics. Philosophia 38, 257–264 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9212-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9212-6

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