Tracing the Arrows of Time
Weinert, Friedel
Weinert, Friedel
Publication Date
2017
End of Embargo
Supervisor
Rights
Peer-Reviewed
yes
Open Access status
Accepted for publication
Institution
Department
Awarded
Embargo end date
Collections
Additional title
Abstract
Over the last century there have been a number of proposals to ground both local and cosmic arrows of time: from the Second law to the Growing Block Universe, from Decoherence to Earman’s time-direction heresy. The latter proposal rejects the traditional association of the Second law of thermodynamics with arrows of time. But it seems that notions like entropy and related notions – phase space volumes and typicality – are not easily banned from discussions of temporal arrows. A close reading of Eddington’s thinking on these questions reveals that his views underwent a considerable development. In particular Eddington abandoned his identification of the arrows of time with the increase in entropy and began to see the Second law as a criterion for temporal arrows. In the process, Eddington also developed an argument against Loschmidt’s reversibility objections, in terms of an expanding universe. This latter argument brings his contribution close to contemporary thinking in terms of Liouville’s theorem, the topology of phase space and typicality arguments. Their reliability to deliver arrows of time will therefore be considered.
Are there arrows of time? This question is related to the epistemological views of both Eddington and Wheeler. They insisted on the role of inferences in scientific thinking. Physical reality was to be inferred from data (Eddington) or information (Wheeler) about the physical universe. The paper will conclude that the arrows of time are equally to be regarded as conceptual inferences from various physical criteria – not just entropy – which the universe makes available to us.
Version
No full-text in the repository
Citation
Weinert F (2017) Tracing the Arrows of Time. In: Durham I & Rickles D (eds) Information and Interaction: Eddington, Wheeler and the Limits of Knowledge. The Frontiers Collection. Cham; Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. 29p.
Link to publisher’s version
Link to published version
Link to Version of Record
Type
Book chapter