Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time
Price (Huw)
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Back Cover Blurb


Notes
  1. I bought this book on the advice of FT - Best Five Books - Carlo Rovelli - Time.
  2. There is a brief Wikipedia page devoted to this book: Wikipedia: Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point
  3. This page has links to some reviews, including those excerpted above. They are less positive than would appear from the excerpts!
    • Joel Lebowitz gave the book a mixed review for Physics Today where he called Price's arguments regarding backward causation "unconvincing", but praised the section on quantum mechanics, writing "his discussion ... of the Bohr-Einstein 'debate' about the completeness of the quantum description of reality is better than much of the physics literature".
      → Lebowitz - Review - Huw Price - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point
    • Peter Coveney gave the book a mixed review for the New Scientist, criticizing Price's treatment of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, but concluding by saying "[a]lthough I didn't find many of the arguments convincing, Price's book is a useful addition to the literature on time, particularly as it reveals the influence of modern science on the way a philosopher thinks. But given its restricted and idiosyncratic character, this book should be read only in conjunction with more broadly based works."
      → Coveney - Review - Huw Price - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point
    • John D. Barrow reviewed the book in Nature, strongly criticizing the chapter on the cosmological arrow of time but writing "the author has done physicists a great service in laying out so clearly and critically the nature of the various time-asymmetry problems of physics"
      → Barrow - Review - Huw Price - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point
    • Craig Callender gave the book a detailed, positive review for The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, calling it "exceptionally readable and entertaining" as well as "a highly original and important contribution to the philosophy and physics of time".
      → Callender - Review - Huw Price - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point
    • Gordon Belot reviewed the book for The Philosophical Review, writing "[t]his is a fertile and fascinating area, and Price's book provides an exciting entree, even if it does not provide all the answers".
      → Belot - Review - Huw Price - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point
  4. The blurbs associated with these links are taken from the Wikipedia book review. They were contemporary with the book. I wonder what the current view is. Carlo Rovelli may not be a reliable guide. I hope to obtain and read them in due course.

Contents
  1. The View from Nowhen – 3
    → Outline of the book – 5
    → Remarks on style – 11
    → The stock philosophical debates about time – 12
    → The arrows of rime – 16
    → The puzzle of origins – 17
  2. “More Apt to Be Lost than Got”: The Lessons of the Second Law – 22
    → Irreversibility discovered: Newton to Boltzmann – 23
    → The reversibility objection I – 27
    → Entropy as probability – 29
    → The reversibility objection II – 31
    → Boltzmann’s symmetric view – 32
    → Do we need to explain why entropy increases? – 37
    → The role of the H-theorem – 40
    → Does chaos theory make a difference? – 43
    → Branch systems - 44
    → Could entropy eventually decrease? – 46
    → Summary – 47
  3. New Light on the Arrow of Radiation – 49
    → The circular wave argument – 54
    → Radiation and banking – 58
    → Radiation and nonfrictionless banking – 60
    → What would time-symmetric radiation look like? – 61
    → The Wheeler-Feynman theory in brief – 65
    → Why doesn’t the argument work in reverse? – 67
    → Are the components distinct? – 69
    → The new interpretation – 70
    → Why the apparent asymmetry? – 71
    → No need for a future absorber – 73
    → Related issues in physics – 73
    → Summary – 76
  4. Arrows and Errors in Contemporary Cosmology – 78
    → The need for smoothness – 79
    → Gold universes and the basic dilemma – 81
    → Smoothness: how surprising is it? – 82
    → The appeal to inflation – 85
    → Hawking and the big crunch – 86
    → The basic dilemma and some ways to avoid it – 93
    → What’s wrong with a Gold universe? – 99
    → A telescope to look into the future? – 105
    → Conclusion – 111
  5. Innocence and Symmetry in Microphysics – 114
    → Conflicting intuitions in contemporary physics – 116
    → Preinteractive “innocence”: the intuitive asymmetry – 118
    → Two kinds of innocence in physics -120
    → Is μInnocence observable? – 121
    → Symmetry or innocence? – 123
    → μInnocence and quantum mechanics – 124
    → μInnocence and backward causation – 127
    → The next step – 129
  6. In Search of the Third Arrow – 132
    → Causal asymmetry: the nature of the problem – 136
    → A third arrow? – 138
    → The fork asymmetry – 138
    → Too few forks – 140
    → Two wavs to misuse a fork – 142
    → A fourth arrow? – 146
    → The symmetry of micro-forks – 147
    → Two extreme proposals – 152
    → The perspectival view – 155
    → Escaping a circle, projecting an arrow – 159
    → Summary – 161
  7. Convention Objectified and the Past Unlocked – 162
    → Asymmetry conventionalized – 163
    → Convention objectified – 166
    → The asymmetry of agency – 168
    → The role of counterfactuals – 169
    → Could the past depend on the future? – 170
    → Escaping the paradoxes of backward causation – 171
    → The past unlocked – 174
    → Advanced action: its objective core – 177
    → Counterfactuals: what should we fix? – 178
    → Advanced action and μInnocence – 179
    → Is μInnocence merely conventional? – 181
    → Why can’t a photon be more like a billiard ball? – 183
    → Symmetry and advanced action 1 – 185
    → Symmetry' and advanced action II – 187
    → Taxonomy and T-symmetry – 189
    → Backward causation: not forward causation backwards – 190
    → Inverted forks and distant effects -191
    → Summary: saving the baby – 192
  8. Einstein’s Issue: The Puzzle of Contemporary' Quantum Theory – 195
    → The quantum view: basic elements – 197
    → A TOM SPLIT IN THOUGHT EXPERIMENT! – 198
    → The EPR argument – 201
    → EPR and special relativity: the cost of nonlocality – 204
    → The temporal asymmetry objection – 206
    → The consequences of superposition – 209
    → Bell’s Theorem – 212
    → EPR for triplets: the GHZ argument – 217
    → What if there is no collapse? – 219
    → Many minds? – 222
    → The decoherence approach – 225
    → Summary: Einsteins live issue – 228
  9. The Case for Advanced Action – 231
    → Outline of the chapter – 233
    → Locality, independence, and the pro-liberty Bell – 235
    → Locality saved in the past – 236
    → Locality saved in the future – 238
    → Was Bell told? – 241
    → The benefits of backward forks – 242
    → Advanced action in quantum mechanics – 246
    → Einstein reissued? – 248
    → Advanced action and the GHZ argument – 251
    → Advanced action and superposition – 252
    → The atemporal view – 257
  10. Overview –261
    → Main conclusions of the book – 262
    → Directions for further work – 266
    → Why it matters – 266
    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index
Book Comment

Oxford University Press, USA; Revised Edition (4 Dec. 1997). Paperback.


"Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: Chapter 10 (Overview)"

Source: Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time, Chapter 10


Notes
Introduction
  • At the beginning of the book I described two opposing viewpoints in the philosophy of time. One view holds that the present moment and the flow of time are objective features of reality. The other view disagrees, treating the apparent objectivity of both these things as a kind of artifact of the particular perspective that we humans have on time. According to the latter view what is objective is the four-dimensional "block universe,” of which time is simply a part. In chapter 1, I outlined some of the attractions of the block universe view. Since then, the project of the book has been to explore its consequences in physics, in two main respects: first, in connection with the attempt to understand various puzzling temporal asymmetries in physics; and second, by way of its bearing on various time-asymmetric presuppositions, which turn out to play a crucial role in standard ways of thinking about quantum mechanics.
  • In particular, I have been trying to correct a variety of common mistakes and misconceptions about time in contemporary physics — mistakes and mis-conceptions whose origins lie in the distorting influence of our own ordinary temporal perspective, and especially of the time asymmetry of that perspective. One important aspect of this problem is a matter of sorting out how much of the temporal asymmetry we think we see in the world is objective, and how much is simply a by-product of our own asymmetry. I have urged that in order to clarify these issues, and to avoid these mistakes, we need to learn to set aside some very deeply ingrained habits of thought. We need to familiarize ourselves with an atemporal perspective — an Archimedean “view from nowhen.”
  • The physical and philosophical concerns of the book have thus been very closely intertwined. The book's conclusions have emerged at a variety of levels, in a variety of voices. Some were substantial proposals concerning contemporary problems in physics or philosophy, others were prescription. for the proper conduct of these disciplines from the Archimedean standpoint and so on. In order to help readers to put the whole thing in perspective. I have listed below, by chapter, the main conclusions of the book.
  • In this book, especially, it would be out of character if the overview looked only in one direction. I finish, therefore, with a few pointers to future work — to the kinds of issues that look important in physics and philosophy, in light of these conclusions.

Main Conclusions Of The Book
  1. Chapter 2. The Lessons of the Second Law
    • What needs to be explained is the low-entropy past, not the high entropy future — why entropy goes down toward the past, not why it goes up toward the future.
    • To a significant extent, then, the H-theorem and its descendants address a pseudo-problem.
    • The traditional criticism of the H-theorem — viz., that it assumes temporal asymmetry in disguised form — turns out to be well motivated but misdirected. The important issue is not whether we are entitled to assume the stosszahlansatz (or PI3, the Principle of the Independence of Incoming Influences) toward the future, but why these independence principles do not hold toward the past.
    • We need to guard against the double standard fallacy — that of accepting arguments with respect to one temporal direction which we wouldn’t accept with respect to the other.
    • The most useful technique for avoiding these fallacies involves imagined time reversal. If an apparently acceptable argument looks counterintuitive when we imagine time reversed, it is a good indication that a double standard is in play. In effect, this simple technique provides temporal creatures such as ourselves with a reliable and readily accessible guide to the standards that would apply from a genuinely atemporal perspective.
  2. Chapter 3. Light on the Arrow of Radiation
    • The issue concerning the asymmetry of radiation is sometimes misrepresented. Correctly understood, it is that as to why there are large coherent sources in the past but not (apparently) in the future.
    • A proper understanding of the problem of temporal asymmetry in thermodynamics shows that a common argument which claims to derive this asymmetry of radiation from the thermodynamic behavior of matter (e.g., the edges of ponds) is fallacious, for it needs to assume the absence of the very boundary conditions — viz., coherent sources of advanced radiation — that it seeks to exclude.
    • This fallacy is even more serious in the Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory, which explicitly assumes that there really is advanced radiation, although we don’t see it.
    • The issue of the asymmetry of radiation thus turns out to be parallel to (rather than reducible to) that raised by thermodynamics, in the sense that it too directs us to the existence of highly ordered conditions in the past.
    • This diagnosis of the nature of the asymmetry of radiation is confirmed by our reinterpreted version of the Wheeler-Feynman theory, which shows that radiation can be considered to be symmetric at the micro level.
    • The argument for the proposed reinterpretation reveals other flaws in the standard version of the Wheeler-Feynman theory.
  3. Chapter 4. Arrows and Errors in Contemporary Cosmology
    • The asymmetries of thermodynamics and radiation appear to depend on the fact that the universe had a particular character early in its history: its matter was very evenly distributed, which is a very ordered condition for a system in which gravity is the dominant force.
    • Contemporary cosmologists continue to underestimate the difficulty of explaining this condition of the early universe without showing that the universe must be in the same condition at its other temporal extremity (which would imply that the familiar asymmetries would reverse as the universe recollapsed). Blindness to this difficulty — the basic dilemma, as I called it — stems from double standard fallacies.
    • Many arguments against the symmetric collapse model also involve double standard fallacies, particularly in relying on statistical reasoning which would equally exclude a low-entropy big bang.
    • There are important questions concerning the consistency and observability of a time-reversing collapse which — because it has been rejected on spurious grounds — have not been properly addressed by physics.
    • Although in many ways further advanced than it was in the late nineteenth century, the contemporary discussion of temporal asymmetry in physics is still plagued by some of the same kinds of mistakes.
  4. Chapter 5. Innocence and Symmetry in Microphysics
    • It is important to distinguish two forms of PI3: the macroscopic case, associated with the fact that the universe has a low-entropy past, and a microscopic case, almost universally taken for granted in physics. The microscopic case embodies the intuitively plausible principle of μInnocence: interacting systems are uncorrelated before they first interact.
    • Unlike its macroscopic cousin, the acceptance of μInnocence does not rest on observational grounds. As it currently operates in physics, it is an independent asymmetric principle, in conflict with the assumed T-symmetry of (almost all) the underlying laws of microphysics.
    • Hence there is a deep and almost unrecognized conflict in contemporary physics. If we are to retain T-symmetry, we should abandon μInnocence.
    • Quantum mechanics suggests that there might be good independent reasons for abandoning μInnocence. μInnocence turns out to be a presupposition of the main arguments for thinking that there is something especially puzzling about quantum mechanics. In other words, quantum mechanics seems to offer empirical confirmation that μInnocence fails.
    • The failure of μInnocence seems to open the way for a kind of backward causation. However, well-recognized features of quantum mechanics seem to block the paradoxes to which backward causation is often thought to lead. But the suggestion raises wider issues about the asymmetry of causation itself, which need to be addressed in their own terms, before the proposal concerning μInnocence can be evaluated properly.
  5. Chapter 6. In Search of the Third Arrow
    • Although the asymmetry of causation is often said by physicists to be of no relevance to contemporary physics, it continues to exert a great influence on the practice of physics. Hence its interest is not merely philosophical: it needs to be understood, so that this influence may be assessed.
    • The most popular philosophical approach to the asymmetry of causation is the third arrow strategy, which seeks to analyze causal asymmetry in terms of a de facto physical asymmetry. However, it turns out that the available candidates are not appropriately distributed in the world. In particular, they fail at the micro level.
    • This point is often obscured by fallacies similar to those which plague attempts to account for the physical temporal asymmetries: double standards and buck-passing, for example.
    • The most plausible solution is the anthropocentric one: the asymmetry of causation is a projection of our own temporal asymmetry as agents in the world.
  6. Chapter 7. Convention Objectified and the Past Unlocked
    • The diagnosis of the previous chapter finds attractive expression in terms of the conventional asymmetry of counterfactual conditionals. However, the conventionalist view seems to make the asymmetry of dependence — the fact that the future depends on the past, but not vice versa — insufficiently objective, in two senses: it seems too weak, in making the asymmetry conventional, and too strong, in ruling out backward causation by fiat.
    • The conventionalist view meets the first point by noting that the convention is not a matter of choice, and thereby explaining its apparent objectivity.
    • The conventionalist view meets the second point by showing that there is a loophole which allows backward dependence, in circumstances in which an agent's access to past events is limited in certain ways.
    • The admission of backward dependence requires an appropriate disambiguation of the relevant convention governing our use of counterfactuals. The disambiguation in question is a matter of linguistic choice, but it is an objective matter whether the world is such as to require us to make this choice.
    • Hence there is an objective possibility concerning the way in which the microworld is structured, which has been all but obscured by our familiar intuitions concerning causation, μInnocence, and the like. As in chapter 5, moreover, it turns out that there is a strong symmetry argument in favor of the hypothesis that the microworld actually has a structure of this kind.
    • Temporal symmetry alone might thus have led us to expect a kind of backward causation, or advanced action, in microphysics.
  7. Chapter 8. The Puzzle of Contemporary Quantum Theory
    • This chapter presented a broad overview of the conceptual issues concerning the interpretation of quantum mechanics, emphasizing the central role of the issue as to whether quantum mechanics is complete. In setting out the difficulties faced by the competing approaches to this issue, my exposition mainly followed conventional lines, but made a few distinctive claims:
    • I argued that hidden variable approaches are in a stronger position than is usually recognized. Given that all conventional views admit nonlocality, it is not a decisive objection to hidden variable views that they too are required to do so. In terms of the conventional debate — the debate which ignores advanced action — then, the contextualist approach remains underexplored.
    • I noted that no collapse views face a difficulty concerning the meaning of probability in quantum mechanics which is even more severe than has previously been recognized, even by philosophical critics.
  8. Chapter 9. The Case for Advanced Action
    • Bell's Theorem depends on the independence assumption, which might be relaxed in two ways: dependence may be secured either in the past, via a common cause, or in the future, via the kind of advanced action whose formal possibility we identified in chapter 7. If successful, either of these strategies would enable quantum mechanics to avoid nonlocality.
    • The common cause strategy seems initially the more attractive strategy in light of our ordinary causal intuitions, but calls for an implausible substructure underlying ordinary physical processes.
    • The advanced action is elegant and economical in comparison, and has the symmetry advantage noted in chapter 6. Quantum mechanics supplies the restrictions on classical observability that the argument of chapter 6 led us to expect.
    • The benefits of the advanced action proposal are not confined to Bell’s Theorem; the proposal also undercuts the non-EPR no hidden variable theorems, and the new GHZ argument for nonlocality.
    • Quantum mechanics might be interpreted as providing a complete description from a limited or partial perspective: a complete view of the world as accessible from the temporal standpoint we normally occupy. This is compatible with the claim that it is an incomplete description of what would be seen from the Archimedean standpoint.
    • This suggestion raises important issues concerning the extent to which the ordinary conceptual framework of physics depends on the temporal viewpoint, for example, in its use of concepts such as degree of freedom and potential, and methods such as statistical reasoning. In this respect the proper form of an atemporal “physics from nowhen” is an issue left open by this book.

Directions For Further Work

What sorts of projects look important in the light of these conclusions? There is work for both physicists and philosophers, I think.
  • In physics
    • Exploration of models incorporating advanced action, especially in quantum mechanics.
    • Exploration of the consistency and possible empirical consequences of symmetric time-reversing cosmologies, and more generally of the issue of the observability of phenomena constrained by future low-entropy boundary conditions.
    • The project of explaining the low-entropy big bang, with the basic dilemma clearly in view.
  • In philosophy
    • The issue of the proper conceptual framework for an atemporal physics. How much of the conceptual machinery of conventional physics depends on our familiar temporal perspective?
    • Similar issues in metaphysics more generally. I have argued that causation and physical dependence are importantly anthropocentric notions, whose temporal asymmetry reflects the contingencies of our own temporal stance. But what would a properly atemporal metaphysics be like?

Why It Matters
  • In what sense do these issues matter? Why shouldn't we ignore the view from nowhen, and go on in physics, philosophy, and ordinary life just as we always have? After all, we cannot actually step outside time, in the way in which we can climb a tree to alter our viewpoint. Isn’t it better to be satisfied with the viewpoint we have?
  • We cannot step outside time, but we can try to understand how the way in which we are situated within time comes to be reflected in the ways in which we talk and think and conceptualize the world around us. What we stand to gain is a deeper understanding of ourselves, and hence — by subtraction, as it were — a deeper understanding of what is external to us. This is a reflective kind of knowledge: we reflect on the nature of the standpoint from within, and thereby gain some sense — albeit, ultimately, a sense-from-within — of what it would be like from without.
  • If the reflexivity were vicious the project would be self-defeating, but is it vicious? Our understanding seems to be enhanced, not overturned. The issue here is an old one: science has long stood proxy in this way for creatures — ourselves — whose own epistemological connections with the world are tenuous, patchy, contingent, and parochial. With each advance comes a new picture of how the world would look from nowhere, and a new appreciation of the limits of our own standpoint. At each stage there is a temptation to think that our standpoint is devalued, but this seems to be a mistake. If we had a choice of standpoints we might choose a different one, but to be swayed by this would be like wanting to be someone else. Because our standpoint is not a matter of choice — no more so than it is a matter of choice who we are — it cannot coherently be undermined in this way.
  • The campaign for a view from nowhen is a campaign for self-improvement, then, and not a misguided attempt to do the impossible, to become something that we can never be. It promises only to enhance our understanding of ourselves and our world, and not to make us gods.


"Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: Chapters 1 - 9"

Source: Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time, Chapters 1 - 9


"Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: Preface"

Source: Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time, Preface


Preface – Full Text
  • Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
    → Marx1.
  • Science, like comedy, often demands that we look at familiar things in unfamiliar ways. Miss the new angles, and we miss the point. In comedy it is the comic’s job to pitch the task at the right level. Too low, and the joke isn’t funny; too high, and the audience doesn’t get it. In science, of course, we are on our own. There are no guarantees that Nature’s gags have been pitched within reach. Great scientists spend lifetimes trying to nut out the hard ones.
  • This book is about one of these perspective shifts — about the need to look at a familiar subject matter from a new vantage point. The subject matter concerned is one of the most familiar of all: it is time, and especially the direction of time. Despite its familiarity, time remains profoundly puzzling. It puzzles contemporary physicists and philosophers who spend large amounts of it thinking about it, as well as countless reflective nonspecialists, in search of a deeper understanding of one of the most central aspects of human life. This book is about the need to think about time’s puzzles from a new viewpoint, a viewpoint outside time. One of my main themes is that physicists and philosophers tend to think about time from too close up. We ourselves are creatures in time, and this is reflected in many ordinary ways of thinking and talking about the world. This makes it very difficult to think about time in an objective way, because it is always difficult to tell whether what we think we see is just a product of our vantage point. In effect, we are too close to the subject matter to see it objectively, and need to step back.
  • This is a familiar idea in the history of science. For example, it took our ancestors a long time to figure out that the Earth and a pebble are the same kind of thing, differing only in size. To take this revolutionary idea on board, one needs to imagine a vantage point from which the Earth and the pebble can both be seen for what they are. Archimedes went one better, and offered to move the Earth, if someone would supply him with this vantage point, and a suitable lever.
  • I want to show that a temporal version of this Archimedean vantage point provides important insights into some of the old puzzles about time. One of its most useful roles is to highlight some old and persistent mistakes that physicists tend to make when they think about the direction of time. More surprisingly, this viewpoint also has important benefits elsewhere in physics. In particular, it throws some fascinating new light on the bizarre puzzles of quantum mechanics. Thus the book offers a novel approach to some of the most engaging issues in contemporary physics, as well as a new perspective on some of the familiar puzzles of time itself.
  • The book is addressed to interested nonspecialists, as well as to physicists and philosophers. In part, this is a kind of fortunate accident. My original thought was to try to make the book accessible to physicists as well as to philosophers (my home team). Many of its conclusions were going to be aimed at physicists, and I realized that there was no point in writing a book that much of the intended audience could not understand. At the same time, however, I wanted the book to be interesting and useful to my philosophical colleagues and students, most of whom have no training in physics. So I aimed for a book which would be accessible to physicists with no training in philosophy and to philosophers with no training in physics. The happy result, I think, is a book which will interest many people whose formal education qualifies on both counts: no philosophy and no physics.
  • I’ve been thinking about these things for a long time. As an undergraduate at ANU, Canberra, in the mid-1970s, the philosophy of time played a large part in my decision to abandon mathematics for philosophy. (I had the good fortune to encounter, in person, the very different perspectives on time of Genevieve Lloyd and D.H. Mellor.) I was an almost instant convert to the atemporal “block universe” view of time (described in chapter 1), at least for the purposes of physics. This view remains the key to the argument of the whole book.
  • A couple of years after that, I was already thinking about some of the issues about physics that turn up later in the book. I remember listening to a discussion of Bell’s Theorem and quantum mechanics at a philosophy seminar in Oxford, and being struck by the thought that one of its crucial assumptions was time-asymmetric, in a way which looks very odd from the kind of atemporal viewpoint that goes with the block universe view. I think that I was right, but the issue turned out to be much more complicated than I then imagined, and it has taken a long time to disentangle all the threads. Strangely, one of the crucial threads goes back to the work of Michael Dummett, the Oxford philosopher who was the speaker that day in 1977 — though his topic had nothing to do with the relevant part of his earlier work, as far as I can recall.
  • A couple of years later again, now a graduate student in Cambridge, I learned more about the physics of time asymmetry. One wet weekend in the spring of 1979,1 attended a small conference on the philosophy of time in Barnstable, Devon. One of the invited speakers was Paul Davies, then a young lecturer in theoretical physics at King’s College, London, who talked about the latest ideas on time in cosmology. I remember asking him afterwards why cosmologists continued to take for granted that the present state of the universe should be explained in terms of its earlier state, rather than its later state. From the atemporal perspective, I felt, this temporal bias looked rather puzzling. I can’t remember exactly what Davies said in reply, but I am sure I failed to convince him that there was anything suspicious going on. But I think the failing wasn’t entirely mine: I have learned that even at this level, it isn’t unusual for physicists and philosophers to have trouble seeing the in-built temporal asymmetries in the ways we think about the world.
  • After graduate school, other philosophical projects kept me busy, and for several years I had little time for time. In 1988-1989, however, with another book finished, and a new job in the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU, I was able to pick up the threads. I became increasingly convinced that physicists tended to make serious mistakes when they thought about time, and especially about the direction of time — the kind of mistakes that careful philosophical thought could help to set right. And the underlying cause of most of these mistakes, I felt, was a failure to look at the problems from a sufficiently distant vantage point. Thus the basic project of the book was laid down.
  • I moved to the University of Sydney in the (southern) winter of 1989. Since then, in trying to extract the book from the gaps between other projects and responsibilities, I have been much assisted by research funding from the University’s Research Grant Scheme (1991) and the Australian Research Council (1992-1993). I have also learned a lot from my students. For several years I have tried out these ideas on mixed classes of advanced undergraduates in philosophy and physics. Their reactions and comments — especially those of the rather skeptical physicists — have been invaluable in helping me to clarify my views. Among my graduate students, I am grateful to Phillip Hart, Nicholas Smith, and Patrick Yong for their comments, criticism and encouragement; and especially to Phil Dowe, now a colleague, with whom I have had many useful discussions about causal asymmetry and other things.
  • In the course of this long project, many other people have helped me with comments on drafts, or discussions or correspondence on particular topics. I am variously indebted to David Albert, John Baez, John Bell, Jeremy Butterfield, Craig Callender, David Chalmers, Paul Davies, Jan Faye, John Gribbin, Daniel M. Hausman, Paul Horwich, Raymond Laflamme, Stephen Leeds, John Leslie, David Lewis, Storrs McCall, Peter Menzies, G.C. Nerlich, Graham Oppy, David Papineau, Roger Penrose, Daniel Quesada, Steven Savitt, J.C.C. Smart, Jason Twamley, Robert Weingard, and Dieter Zeh — and, I suspect and fear, to many others whose specific contributions I cannot now recall.
  • Two of these people deserve special mention. J.C.C. Smart is an Australian philosopher, well known, among other things, for his work on the philosophy of time. (Twenty years ago, when I first encountered the subject, his work was already classic.) Because he is an exponent of the block universe view, as well as a generous and enthusiastic man, I expected him to be positive about the early drafts of this book. Even so, the warmth of his response has surprised me, and his comments and enthusiasm have been a very great source of encouragement.
  • Dieter Zeh, of Heidelberg University, is well known among physicists for his work on the direction of time. He wrote to me in 1989, responding to an article which had just appeared in Nature, in which I criticized some of Stephen Hawking's claims about the direction of time. I felt rather hesitant about taking on such a famous opponent in such a public forum, so it was a great relief and encouragement when Zeh's note arrived, saying “I agree with every word you say about Hawking.” We have been regular correspondents since then, and although there are many points on which we continue to disagree, these exchanges have been an important source of insight and encouragement, as the book has come together.
  • Some of the book draws on material I have previously published elsewhere. Chapter 3 relies heavily on the article listed in the Bibliography as Price (1991c), chapter 4 on (1995), chapter 6 on (1992a), and parts of chapters 7 and 9 on (1994). I am grateful to the editors and publishers concerned for permission to reuse the material in this form.
  • Finally, two more personal acknowledgments. I am very warmly indebted to Nye Rozea, not least for his cheerful and unflagging skepticism about the entire project — indeed, about my intellectual capacities in general. This proved a priceless antidote to self-esteem, and I’m not sure which of us will be more surprised to see the book finished. Nye’s generous filial skepticism was tempered, happily, by the support and enthusiasm — more considered, I think, but perhaps therefore even more generous — of Susan Dodds. To these two friends, then, for what it’s worth: take this ...



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