Everywhere and Everywhen Adventures in Physics and Philosophy

by Huggett, Nick

• ISBN13: 9780199776559
• ISBN10: 0199776555
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2010-05-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Why does time pass and space does not? Are there just three dimensions? What is a quantum particle? Nick Huggett shows that philosophy -- armed with a power to analyze fundamental concepts and their relationship to the human experience -- has much to say about these profound questions about the universe. In Everywhere and Everywhen, Huggett charts a journey that peers into some of the oldest questions about the world, through some of the newest, such as: What shape is space? Does it have an edge? What is the difference between past and future? What is time in relativity? Is time travel possible? Are there other universes?
Huggett shows that answers to these profound questions are not just reserved for physics, and that philosophy can not only address but help advance our view of our deepest questions about the universe, space, and time, and their implications for humanity. His lively, accessible introduction to these topics is suitable for a general reader with no previous exposure to these profound and exciting questions.

Author Biography

Nick Huggett is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Table of Contents

1. A Longish Introduction: The Problem of Change
1.1 Melissus's Paradox
1.2 What is Change?
1.3 Laws
1.4 Spacetime Today

2. Zeno's Paradoxes
2.1 The Dichotomy Paradox
2.2 "Supertasks"

3. Zeno's Arrow Paradox
3.1 The Paradox
3.2 What Philosophy Can Teach Physics

4. The Shape of Space I-Topology
4.1 An End to Space?
4.2 Neither Bounded Nor Infinite;
4.3 What Physics Can Teach Philosophy

5. Beyond the Third Dimension?
5.1 Multi-Dimensional Life
5.2 More Than Three Dimensions?

6. Why Three Dimensions?
6.1 The Force of Gravity and the Dimensions of Space
6.2 Does Intelligent Life Take Three Dimensions?
6.3 Is the Universe Made for Humans?
6.4 The Megaverse; 6.5 Philosophy in Physics

7. The Shape of Space II-Curved Space?
7.1 Mathematical Certainty
7.2 Life in Non-Euclidean Geometry
7.3 What Kind of Knowledge is Geometry?

8. Looking For Geometry
8.1 Measuring the Geometry of Space?
8.2 The 'Geometry' of Poincar?e's Space
8.3 How to Disprove a Definition
8.4 Experiencing Space: 8.5 Where is Geometry?

9. What is Space?
9.1 Space=Matter
9.2 Relational Space
9.3 Absolute Space
9.4 Relational Space Redux
9.5 What Physics and Philosophy Can Teach Each Other

10. Time
10.1 Time vs. Space
10.2 Nowism
10.3 A Moving Now?
10.4 McTaggart's Argument
10.5 Passing Time in a Block Universe

11. Time and Tralfamadore
11.1 The Mind's Worldline
11.2 Experience of Space vs. Time
11.3 Another Arrow
11.4 Physics and the Philosophy of Perception

12. Time Travel
12.1 What is Time Travel?
12.2 Is Time Travel Possible?
12.3 The Problem with Time Travel
12.4 Possible and Impossible Time Travel
12.5 The Philosophy and Physics of Time Travel

13. Why Can't I Stop my Younger Self from Time Traveling?
13.1 Physics Might Stop Me
13.2 . . . and If Not, Logic Will
13.3 My Precise Physical State Stops Me
13.4 Living in a Physical Universe

14. Spacetime and the Theory of Relativity
14.1 Photons and Bullets
14.2 Convention
14.3 Relativity-When is Now?
14.4 Relativistic Spacetime
14.5 Relativity of Length
14.6 Relativity of Time;

15. Time in Relativity
15.1 The Twins
15.2 General Relativity
15.3 Time vs. Space Yet Again
15.4 Einstein's Revolution in Philosophy

16. Hands and Mirrors
16.1 Is Handedness Intrinsic or Extrinsic?
16.2 The 'Fitting' Account
16.3 Kant's Argument against the Fitting Account
16.4 Looking Left and Right
16.5 Mirrors; 16.6 Orientability

17. Identity
17.1 Particle Statistics
17.2 Schr?odinger's Counting Games

18. Quarticles
18.1 New Counting Games
18.2 Hookon Identity
18.3 Indistinguishable Quarticles?
18.4 Quanta as Quarticles

19. Where Next?