{"id":2346,"date":"2015-01-29T06:06:58","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T06:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=2346"},"modified":"2015-01-29T06:06:58","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T06:06:58","slug":"does-time-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/does-time-pass\/","title":{"rendered":"Does time pass?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philosopher Brad Skow\u2019s new book says it does \u2014 but not in the way you may think.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"MIT<\/a>
MIT associate professor of philosophy Brad Skow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —\u00a0\u201cIf you walk into a cocktail party and say, \u2018I don\u2019t believe that time passes,\u2019 everyone\u2019s going to think you\u2019re completely insane,\u201d says Brad Skow, an associate professor of philosophy at MIT.<\/span><\/p>\n

He would know: Skow himself doesn\u2019t believe time passes, at least not in the way we often describe it, through metaphorical descriptions in which we say, as he notes, \u201cthat time flows like a river, or we move through time the way a ship sails on the sea.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Skow doesn\u2019t believe time is ever in motion like this. In the first place, he says, time should be regarded as a dimension of spacetime, as relativity theory holds \u2014 so it does not pass by us in some way, because spacetime doesn\u2019t. Instead, time is part of the uniform larger fabric of the universe, not something moving around inside it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now in a new book, \u201cObjective Becoming,\u201d published by Oxford University Press, Skow details this view, which philosophers call the \u201cblock universe\u201d theory of time.<\/span><\/p>\n

In one sense, the block universe theory seems unthreatening to our intuitions: When Skow says time does not pass, he does not believe that nothing ever happens. Events occur, people age, and so on. \u201cThings change,\u201d he agrees.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Skow believes that events do not sail past us and vanish forever; they just exist in different parts of spacetime. (Some physics students who learn to draw diagrams of spacetime may find this view of time intuitive.) Still, Skow\u2019s view of time does lead to him to offer some slightly more unusual-sounding conclusions.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance: We exist in a \u201ctemporally scattered\u201d condition, as he writes in the new book.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe block universe theory says you\u2019re spread out in time, something like the way you\u2019re spread out in space,\u201d Skow says. \u201cWe\u2019re not located at a single time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Spotlighting the alternatives<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cObjective Becoming,\u201d Skow aims to convince readers that things could hardly be otherwise. To do so, he spends much of the book considering competing ideas about time \u2014 the ones that assume time does pass, or move by us in some way. \u201cI was interested in seeing what kind of view of the universe you would have if you took these metaphors about the passage of time very, very seriously,\u201d Skow says.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, Skow finds these alternatives lacking, including one fairly popular view known as \u201cpresentism,\u201d which holds that only events and objects in the present can be said to exist \u2014 and that Skow thinks defies the physics of spacetime.<\/span><\/p>\n

Skow is more impressed by an alternative idea called the \u201cmoving spotlight\u201d theory, which may allow that the past and future exist on a par with the present. However, the theory holds, only one moment at a time is absolutely present, and that moment keeps changing, as if a spotlight were moving over it. This is also consistent with relativity, Skow thinks \u2014 but it still treats the present as being too distinct, as if the present were cut from different cloth than the rest of the universal fabric.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the theory is fantastic,\u201d Skow writes of the moving spotlight idea. \u201cThat is, I think it is a fantasy. But I also have a tremendous amount of sympathy for it.\u201d After all, the moving spotlight idea does address our sense that there must be something special about the present.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe best argument for the moving spotlight theory focuses on the seemingly incredible nature of what the block universe theory is saying about our experience in time,\u201d Skow adds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, he says, that argument ultimately \u201crests on a big confusion about what the block universe theory is saying. Even the block universe theory agrees that \u2026 the only experiences I\u2019m having are the ones I\u2019m having now in this room.\u201d The experiences you had a year ago or 10 years ago are still just as real, Skow asserts; they\u2019re just \u201cinaccessible\u201d because you are now in a different part of spacetime.<\/span><\/p>\n

That may take a chunk of, well, time to digest. But by treating the past, present, and future as materially identical, the theory is consistent with the laws of physics as we understand them. And at MIT, that doesn\u2019t sound insane at all.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philosopher Brad Skow\u2019s new book says it does \u2014 but not in the way you may think.\u00a0 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —\u00a0\u201cIf you walk into a cocktail party and say, \u2018I don\u2019t believe that time passes,\u2019 everyone\u2019s going to think you\u2019re completely insane,\u201d says Brad Skow, an associate professor of philosophy at MIT. He would know: Skow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-curiosity","category-other"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",600,400,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",600,400,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",540,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",639,426,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MIT-Bradford-Skow-01.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Curiosity<\/a> Other<\/a>","tag_info":"Other","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}