Abstract
If, as I have argued, God exists in time and there is some physical time which is the measure of God’s time, as Newton believed, then the question arises as to whether we have some idea of which measured time coincides with God’s metaphysical time, or in other words, what clock time is the true time? The answer to this question will take us from Special into General Relativity, as we seek to gain a cosmic perspective on time.
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Reference
A. Einstein, “The Foundations of General Relativity Theory,” in General Theory of Relativity,ed. C. W. Kilmister, Selected Readings in Physics (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1973), pp. 141–172. The original paper appeared in Annalen der Physik 49 (1916): 769.
See the very frank discussion by Hermann Bondi, “Is `General Relativity’ Necessary for Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation?” in Relativity, Quanta, and Cosmology in the Development of the Scientific Thought of Albert Einstein,ed. Francesco De Finis, 2 vols. (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1979), pp. 179–186. According to Bondi, any notion of equivalence between inertial and accelerated observers is “physically meaningless,” which goes to show “how void of significance any general principle of relativity must be.” But because “a physically sound formulation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation exists not involving the physically empty concept of general relativity,” one may admire and embrace Einstein’s theory of gravitation while rejecting his route to it. “It is perhaps rather late to change the name of Einstein’s theory of gravitation, but general relativity is a physically meaningless phrase that can only be viewed as a historical memento of a curious philosophical observation.” Einstein, “Foundations of General Relativity,” p. 143.
Isaac Newton, The Principia,trans. I Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, with a Guide by I. Bernard Cohen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 414. bid., pp. 6–7.
Einstein, “Foundations of General Relativity,” pp. 143–144.
See his lucid commentary in Michael Friedman, Foundations of Spacetime Theories ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 ), pp. 204–215.
Einstein, “Foundations of General Relativity,” p. 143.
See Friedman, Spacetime Theories,pp. 191–204 for the following critique.
Kurt Gödel, “A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. P. A. Schilpp, Library of Living Philosophers 7 ( LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1949 ), pp. 557–562;
I. Ozsvâth and E. Schücking, “Finite Rotating Universe,” Nature 193 (1962): 1168–1169.
A. Einstein, “Ether and the Theory of Relativity,” in Sidelights on Relativity ( New York: Dover Publications, 1903 ), pp. 16–17.
A. Einstein, “Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity,” in The Principle of Relativity,by Albert Einstein, et al.,with Notes by A. Sommerfeld, trans. W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery (rep. ed.: New York: Dover Publications, 1952), pp. 177–188.
Bemulf Kanitscheider, Kosmologie (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, Jun., 1984), p. 155. See also G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, 2d ed. ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980 ), pp. 283–284.
Willem de Sitter, “On the Relativity of Inertia,” in Koninldijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Amsterdam. Afdeling Wis-en Natuurkundige Wetenschappen. Proceedings of the Section of Science 19 (1917): 1217–1225.
Arthur S. Eddington, The Expanding Universe ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952 ), p. 6.
A. Friedmann, “Über die Krümmung des Raumes,” Zeitschrift für Physik 10 (1922): 377–386.
A. S. Eddington, “On the Instability of Einstein’s Spherical World,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 19 (1930): 668–678.
Albert Einstein, quoted in George Gamow, My World Line ( New York: Viking Press, 1970 ), p. 44.
Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thome, and John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation ( San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973 ), pp. 713–714.
Kanitscheider comments, “On the other hand it should also be emphasized concerning the geometric side of this world model that the simple, form-preserving (dynamic), physical geometry can be traced back to the boundary conditions which have been laid down and by no means possess either a logically a priori or physically necessary character. If one eases the boundary conditions, one obtains world models with shear and rotation, and they, too,… can be brought into harmony with the Einsteinian gravitational theory” (Ibid., p. 188).
See Peter Kroes, Time: Its Structure and Role in Physical Theories, Synthèse Library 179 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985 ), pp. 60–96.
Such is the treatment of Friedman, Spacetime Theories,for all the theories he discusses, including Newtonian spacetime (pp. 71–124).
There are three choices of time parameter available in GR, according to Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler: (i) the original time variable t. “This quantity gives directly proper time elapsed since the start of the expansion. It is the time available for the formation of galaxies. It is also the time during which radioactive decay and other physical processes have been taken place” (Gravitation,p. 730). (ii) the expansion factor R(t). Since this factor grows with time, it serves to distinguish one phase of the expansion from another, thus serving as a parametric measure of time in its own right. The ratio of R(t) at two different times gives the ratio of the dimensions of the universe at those two times. (iii) the arc-parameter measure of time 71(4 During the time interval dt,a photon traveling on hypersphere of radius R(t) covers an arc in radians equal to dirdt/R(t). (In a model where the curvature constant k=0 or the words “hypersphere” and “arc” should be replaced with their appropriate analogues.) Small values of the arc parameter indicate early times in the universe, large values later times.
Kroes, Time, p. 96. Dorato also maintains that “cosmic time would be an ideal candidate with respect to which to define a world-wide, mind-independent becoming” (Mauro Dorato, Time and Reality: Spacetime Physics and the Objectivity of Temporal Becoming, Collana di Studi Epistemologici II [Bologna: CLUES, 1995 ], p. 189 ).
See S. J. Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), chaps. 4, 5, 6.
Martin J. Rees, “The Size and Shape of the Universe,” in Some Strangeness in the Proportion, ed. Harry Woolf (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1980 ), p. 293.
Ibid., p. 301. See also now Martin Rees, Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others,with a Foreword by Stephen Hawking (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997), p. 34: “The simple `model universes’ tum out, more than 60 years later, to fit extraordinarily well—they are more relevant to our real universe than Friedmann and other the pioneers would have dared to hope.”
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,p. 307.
S. W. Hawking, “The Existence of Cosmic Time Functions,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 308 (1968): 433–435.
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,p. 302.
Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation,Cambridge Science Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920; rep.ed.: 1987), p. 168.
Adolf Grünbaum asserts, “In short, it is because no relations of absolute simultaneity exist to be measured that measurement cannot disclose them; it is not the mere failure of measurement to disclose them that constitutes their non-existence, much as that failure is evidence for their non-existence” (Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time,2nd ed., Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 12 [Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1973], p. 368). Richard Swinbume plumps for a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of SR, commenting, “One can describe the Universe of Special Relativity perfectly intelligibly by supposing that its equations show a limit to our knowledge of absolute simultaneity, not a limit to its existence” (Richard Swinburne, Space and Time,2d ed. [London: Macmillan, 1981], p. 201).
Paul Fitzgerald, “The Truth about Tomorrow’s Sea Fight,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 325. 48 Ibid., p. 326. See also the identification of cosmic time as God’s time by Keith Ward, Religion and Creation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 301–303. Fitzgerald later rejected the identification of cosmic time with God’s time because cosmic time, being a statistical matter based on mean matter density, allows a range of regions of the universe to be classed as simultaneous. “This means that strictly speaking, several mutually incompatible `cosmic times’ will be definable, each equally usable for the gross purposes of the astronomer, and none sufficiently preferable to the others to justify identifying it with `God’s time— (Idem, ”Relativity Physics and the God of Process Philosophy,“ Process Studies 2 [19721: 256). The problem is that Fitzgerald is still operating with a reductionistic view of time which equates time with physical time. But if God’s time is metaphysical and cosmic time a sensible measure thereof, then it does not matter, as Newton saw, whether this measure is more or less equable. Cosmic time gives a rough measure of God’s time. Moreover, as a result of measurements made since the launch of the COBE satellite in 1989, we now have very precise measurements of the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, thereby honing the measure of cosmic time.
Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation,p. 34. Cf. Graves’s comment that it makes no difference to the validity of the (tensor) initial value equations how we define a hypersurface or what sort of coordinates we use on it. The choice of an initial hypersurface is “wholly arbitrary” (John Cowperthwaite Graves, The Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Relativity Theory,with a Foreword by John Archibald Wheeler [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971], pp. 250–252). So also Vesselin Petkov, “Simultaneity, Conventionality, and Existence,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (1989): 75, who argues that all events are therefore equally real.
Michael Shallis, “Time and Cosmology,” in The Nature of Time,ed. Raymond Flood and Michael Lockwood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 68–69. Cf. Asghar Qadir and John Archibald Wheeler, “York’s Cosmic Time Versus Proper Time as Relevant to Changes in the Dimensionless `Constants,’ K-Meson Decay, and the Unity of Black Hole and Big Crunch,” in From SU(3) to Gravity,ed. Errol Gotsman and Gerald Tauber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 383–394. z Kroes, Time,p. 16.
Of course, as Dorato points out, the existence of a plurality of cosmic times which is merely the result of a change of origin or a change of scale within the global time function does nothing to undermine the objectivity of cosmic time (Dorato, Time and Reality,p. 201; cf. p. 192, n.12). ss P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology and Black Hole Evaporations,” in The Study of Time III,ed. J. T. Fraser, N. Lawrence, and D. Park (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1978), p. 76. I have corrected the spelling errors in the quotation.
Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe; idem, “The Logic of the Clock Paradox,” paper presented at the International Conference of the British Society for Philosophy of Science, “Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory,” Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, 16–19 September, 1988; idem, “The Twin Paradoxes of Special Relativity—Their Resolution and Implications,” Foundations of Physics (preprint). Cf. Swinburne, Space and Time,chaps. 11, 12.
Michael Ciaran Duffy, “The Modified Vortex Sponge: a Classical Analogue for General Relativity,” paper presented at the International Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, “Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory,” London, 16–19 September, 1988. According to the eminent Italian physicist Franco Selleri, “the absence of the notion of an ether has important, negative consequences for the possibility of our rationally understanding the world of physics and notably the nature of time” (Franco Selleri, “Le principe de la relativité et la nature du temps,” Fusion 66 [1997]: 54). Selleri’s article is strikingly confirmatory of the understanding of SR defended in this book.
Michael Heller, Zbigniew Klimek, and Konrad Rudnicki, “Observational Foundations for Assumptions in Cosmology,” in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data, ed. M. S. Longair ( Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974 ), p. 3.
Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe, pp. 76–78, 126; so also Geoffery Builder, “Ether and Relativity,” Australian Journal of Physics 11 (1958): 279–297, reprinted in Speculations in Science and Technology 2 (1979): 230–242.
Heller, et al.,“Foundations for Assumptions in Cosmology,” pp. 4–5.
G. F. Smoot, M. Y. Gorenstein, and R. A. Muller, “Detection of Anisotropy in the Cosmic Blackbody Radiation,” Physical Review Letters 39 (1977): 899.
Rem Mansouri and Roman U. Sexl, “A Test Theory of Special Relativity: I. Simultaneity and Clock Synchronization,” General Relativity and Gravitation 8 (1977): 497–498.
Henry Pierce Stapp, “Quantum Mechanics, Local Causality, and Process Philosophy,” Process Studies 7 (1977): 176. In order to rescue the relativity of simultaneity, Stapp is driven to decouple temporal order from the order of coming into existence. Not only is this expedient counter-intuitive; it is ultimately futile, since in some frame temporal order will coincide with the absolute order of becoming, and thereby that frame will be distinguished.
Consider Arthur I. Miller’s paper, “On Some Other Approaches to Electrodynamics in 1905,” in Strangeness in the Proportion,pp. 66–91, in connection with P. A. M. Dirac’s remark in discussion that “In one respect Einstein went far beyond Lorentz and Poincaré and the others, and that was in asserting that the Lorentz transformation would apply to the whole of physics and not merely to the phenomena based on electrodynamics…, which is going far beyond what the people who were working with electrodynamics were thinking about. And, of course, in a way Einstein was wrong, because the Lorentz transformation does not apply to everything. There is the microwave radiation, which does provide an absolute velocity. It provides an ether, but the real importance of Einstein’s work was to show how Lorentz transformations dominate physics” (P. A. M. Dirac, “Discussion,” Strangeness in the Proportion,pp. 110–111). Cf. Elie Zahar, “Why Did Einstein’s Programme Supersede Lorentz’s? (II),” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24 (1973): 243–244. Cf. Nathan Rosen’s comment: “In view of the existence of the Hubble effect, it appears that the universe is expanding. It also appears that there exists a frame of reference—nearly coinciding with that of the solar system—in which the universe presents isotropic appearance. This holds for the Hubble effect and also the microwave background radiation. In other words there exists a fundamental frame in the universe. From the equations of the general relativity theory one can also show that, in such an expanding universe, an observer carrying out mechanical and optical experiments in his laboratory in principle can determine the motion of the laboratory with respect to this fundamental frame of reference. One cannot help wondering what would have happened had Einstein been aware of the existence of this fundamental reference frame at the time he was looking for a generalization of the special relativity theory that would describe gravitation. Would he have developed the same general relativity theory that he actually did?” (Nathan Rosen, “Bimetric General Relativity and Cosmology,” General Relativity and Gravitation 12 [1980]: 494.)
H. Hönl and H. Dehnen, “The Aporias of Cosmology and the Attempts at Overcoming Them by Nonstandard Models,” in Old and New Questions in Physics, Cosmology, Philosophy, and Theoretical Biology, ed. Alwyn van der Merwe ( New York: Plenum Press, 1983 ), p. 150.
P. A. M. Dirac, “Is There an Aether?” Nature 168 (29 November 1951), 906–907; cf. P. A. M. Dirac and L. Infeld, “Is There an Aether?” Nature 169 (26 April 1952 ), 772.
R. Rompe and H.-J. Treder, “Is Physics at the Threshold of a New Stage of Evolution?” in Quantum, Space and Time—The Quest Continues, ed. Asim O. Barut, Alwyn van der Merwe, and Jean-Paul Vigier, Cambridge Monographs on Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 603–604. See also Alexander W. Stem, “Space, Field, and Ether in Contemporary Physics,” Science 116 (November 1952 ): 493–496.
Edmund Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, 2 vols. (rep. ed.: New York: Humanities Press, 1973 ), I:v.
When an observer starts moving in this medium, the oncoming energy flow does meet him and it may seem that the observer could measure this flow (this would be the `wind’). However, another oncoming energy flow, due to negative pressure, will also be there. This flow has negative sign, its magnitude equal to that of the former flow and exactly canceling it. As a result, no `wind’ is produced. Whatever the motion of the observer by inertia, he always measures the same energy density of the vacuum (if it is nonzero) and the same negative pressure, so no `wind’ will be created by the motion. The vacuum is the same for all observers moving by inertia with respect to one another…“ (Igor D. Norikov, The River of Time, trans. Vitaly Kisin [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ], p. 175 ).
Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity, Aristotelian Society Series 13 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994 ), p. 4.
The reader may note that Einstein’s attitude toward quantum mechanical descriptions in quantum theory was thus the precise opposite of his positivistic attitude toward absolute simultaneity in Relativity Theory! This strange inconsistency was not lost on others, who queried Einstein about it, only to receive the reply, “A good joke should not be repeated!”
A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, “Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 47 (1935): 777, reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, ed. John Archibald Wheeler and Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Princeton Series in Physics ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 ), p. 138.
J. S. Bell, “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox,” Physics 1 (1964): 195–200, reprinted inQuantum Theory and Measurement, pp. 403–408.
See Main Aspect and Philippe Grangier, “Experiments on Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-type correlations with pairs of visible photons,” in Quantum Concepts in Space and Time,ed. R. Penrose and C. J. Isham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 1–15; W. Tittel, J. Brendel, N. Gisin, and H. Zbinden, “Long Distance Bell-type Tests Using Energy-Time Entangled Photons,” Physical Review A 59/6 (1999): 4150–4163.
I think it’s a deep dilemma, and the resolution of it will not be trivial; it will require a substantial change in the way we look at things. But I would say that the cheapest resolution is something like going back to relativity as it was before Einstein, when people like Lorentz and Poincaré thought that there was an aether—a preferred frame of reference—but that our measuring instruments were distorted by motion in such a way that we could not detect motion through the aether….that is certainly the cheapest solution. Behind the apparent Lorentz invariance of the phenomena, there is a deeper level which is not Lorentz invariant….what is not sufficiently emphasized in textbooks, in my opinion, is that the pre-Einstein position of Lorentz and Poincaré, Larmor and Fitzgerald was perfectly coherent, and is not inconsistent with relativity theory. The idea that there is an aether, and these Fitzgerald contractions and Larmor dilations occur, and that as a result the instruments do not detect motion through the aether—that is a perfectly coherent point of view…. The reason I want to go back to the idea of an aether here is because in these EPR experiments there is the suggestion that behind the scenes something is going faster than light. Now if all Lorentz frames are equivalent
The simplest picture of nature compatible with quantum theory is the model of David Bohm. It explains all of the empirical facts of a relativistic quantum theory, including, in particular, the impossibility of transmitting `signals’ (i.e., controlled messages) faster than light. In spite of this complete agreement with relativistic quantum theory at the level of observed phenomena, and the strict prohibition of all observable faster-thanlight effects, Bohm’s model is based explicitly on the postulated existence of an advancing sequence of preferred global `flows,’ which single out a preferred reference frame for defining absolute simultaneity.
John Bell,“ interview in P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, The Ghost in the Atom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 48–49. Cf. J. S. Bell, ”The paradox of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen: action at a distance in quantum mechanics?“ Speculations in Science and Technology 10 (1987): 279. According to Vigier, ”…far from destroying the Einstein-de Broglie causal point of view, it may very well turn out that quantum non-locality would act in their favor, provide evidence of the `aether’s’ existence, strengthening (instead of weakening) their basic idea that our universe is a causal, deterministic machine—and show that Einstein was basically right in the Bohr-Einstein controversy“ (Jean-Paul Vigier, ”Louis de Broglie—Physicist and Thinker,“ in Quantum, Space and Time,pp. 9–10). ee also J. S. Bell, ”On the Impossible Pilot Wave,“ in Quantum, Space and Time,pp. 66–76.
Henry Stapp to D. R. Griffin, April 16, 1992, cited in David Ray Griffin, “Hartshorne, God, and Relativity Physics,” Process Studies 21 (1992): 109–110.
James T. Cushing, Philosophical Concepts in Physics ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ), p. 337.
David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics ( London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1957 ), p. 97.
Cushing remarks, “The prevalence of an empiricist-operationalist philosophical tendency among Heisenberg, Pauli, and Bohr can be traced in part (somewhat ironically, given Einstein’s later view) back to Einstein’s 1905 relativity papers. This operationalist approach, one aspect of which was an eschewal of unobservable entities in a theory, seems to have made a great impression and to have exerted a profound influence upon young German physicists” (Cushing, Philosophical Concepts in Physics,p. 287). In fact, Heisenberg described his abandonment of the “Kantian category of causality” as the natural continuation of Einstein’s overthrow of Kantian space and time as forms of intuition! (Mara Beller, “Bohm and the `Inevitability’ of Acausality,” in Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal,ed. James T. Cushing, Arthur Fine, and Sheldon Goldstein, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 184 [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996], p. 214).
See, e.g.,Antony Valentini, “Pilot-Wave Theory of Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology,” in Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory,pp. 45–66; Tim Maudlin, “Space-Time in the Quantum World,” in Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory,pp. 285–307. Valentini points out that the pilot wave model naturally singles out a preferred rest frame. “The nonlocality acts instantaneously across a true 3-space, defining an absolute simultaneity and a true time t (Valentini, ”Pilot-Wave Theory,“ p. 56). What emerges ”is not Einstein’s special relativity but Lorentz’s earlier interpretation of the Lorentz transformations“ (Ibid.). Such an absolute 3+1 approach to electrodynamics is simpler and therefore preferable to the relativistic approach. Valentini extends the absolute 3+1 approach into general relativity as well, postulating an absolute, curved 3-space which evolves in absolute time. Nonlocality distinguishes and maintains the absolute slicing of spacetime into 3-D hypersurfaces. Maudlin argues that if we are to avoid backward causation, we must either postulate a foliation of spacetime into spacelike hyperplanes which serve to define a preferred synchronization between widely separated events or else posit directly a synchronization parameter. The most straightforward route to integrating quantum theory with relativity theory, he states, is to add some structure to spacetime and, hence, to reject relativity as the complete story. He asserts, ”Indeed, given that this is the most obvious way to frame Bohmian or collapse theory in a non-classical space-time, we ought to take it as a benchmark. What Bohm’s theory and the collapse theories seem to need is something like the classical notion of simultaneity: a fundamental physical relation between events at space-like separation. In effect such a relation would induce a foliation of spacetime, a division of the space-time manifold into a stack of space-like hyperplanes. Putting a measure over those hyperplanes yields an absolute time function in terms of which the Bohmian dynamics or the collapse dynamics can be framed. If there is something objectionable about adding a foliation to space-time, we should consider just how objectionable it is, since there is no point in doing something even more objectionable just to retain the relativistic account of space-time“ (Maudlin, ”Space-Time in the Quantum World,“ p. 295). See Maudlin’s ensuing, interesting discussion about what would be so terrible, after all, about positing such structure. He indicts contemporary theorists for an ”obsessive attachment to Relativity“ (Ibid., p. 305).
Craig Callender and Robert Weingard, “The Bohmian Model of Quantum Cosmology,” in PSA 1994, ed. David Hull, Micky Forbes, and Richard M. Burian ( East Lansing, Mich.: Philosophy of Science Association, 1994 ), p. 218.
See Niels Bohr, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 48 (1935): 696–702, reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement,pp. 145–151.
Such assertions may not even be true. It is very difficult to see why the entanglement-based quantum cryptography suggested by the experiments of the Geneva Group (see note 80) would not involve the instantaneous transmission of information even in the absence of superluminal propagation of causal influences. James Franson of Johns-Hopkins, when asked how identical random-number sequences generated simultaneously by widely separated particles differs from information, could only say, “That’s a difficult question, and I don’t think anyone could give you a coherent answer. Quantum theory is confirmed by experiments, and so is relativity theory, which prevents us from sending messages faster than light. I don’t know that there’s any intuitive explanation of what that means” (“Far Apart, 2 Particles Respond Faster than Light,” New York Times [22 July 1997 ], p. C1 ).
See Henry. Stapp, pp, “Are Faster-Than-Light Influences Necessary?” in Quantum Mechanics versus Local Realism, ed. Franco Selleri, Physics of Atoms and Molecules (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), pp. 71–72, who points out that Bohr and Heisenberg themselves effectively reject the EPR locality assumption. See the very interesting statement by Werner Heisenberg, The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory ( New York: Dover, 1930 ), p. 39.
Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality,p. 196; cf. pp. 137–138, 144.
Ibid., p. 239. Cf. P. H. Eberhard, “Bell’s Theorem and the Different Concepts of Locality,” Il Nuovo Cimento 46B (1978): 392–419; Luis Carlos Ryff, “Gedanken Experiments on Duality,” in Wave-Particle Duality, ed. Franco Selleri (New York: Plenum Press, 1992 ), p. 249.
Karl Popper, “A Critical Note on the Greatest Days of Quantum Theory,” in Quantum, Space and Time,p. 54; cf idem, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics,ed. W. W. Bartley, III (Totowa, N. J.: Rowan & Littlefield, 1982), pp. xviii, 20. Cf. Penrose’s judgement: The EPR results “pose a profound challenge to any ‘realistic’ space-time picture of what is going on consistently with the tenets of relativity theory” (R. Penrose, “Is Conscious Awareness Consistent with Space-Time Descriptions?” in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Modern Physics,ed. Enno Rudolf and I.-O. Stamatescu [Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1994], p. 43). Popper’s use of the expression “infinite velocity” is misleading, since the salient point is the simultaneous collapse of the correlated two wave functions, as if they were joined by an influence of infinite velocity. See Abner Shimony, “Metaphysical Problems in the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics,” International Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1978): 13.
Popper, Quantum Theory,p. 29. Actually, as Maudlin points out, one may either return to a Newtonian spacetime and show how electromagnetic effects in rods and clocks conceal the fundamental Newtonian structure or else one can retain the relativistic metric at the fundamental level and add some spacetime structure, such as preferred foliation, to it. Maudlin himself prefers to abandon relativity by means of the latter route because it is more straightforward. (Maudlin, “Space-Time in the Quantum World,” p. 297; cf. pp. 295, 306). On either account, as Callender notes, temporal becoming “could occur either with respect to this extra structure or with respect to the underlying neo-Newtonian structure” (Callender, “Shedding Light on Time,” p. 8).
James T. Cushing, “What Measurement Problem?” in Perspectives on Quantum Reality,ed. Rob Clifton, University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science 57 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), p. 175; cf. James T. Cushing, Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony,Science and Its Conceptual Foundations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 188–192. Popper also points out that there are “independent arguments” for a return to Lorentz’s approach, as required by EPR, “especially since the discovery of the microwave background radiation” (Popper, Quantum Theory,p. 30).
David Bohm to D. R. Griffin, May 17, 1992, cited in Griffin, “God and Relativity Physics,” p. 110. When Callender and Weingard contrast the cosmic time of Bohmian cosmology with “the arbitrary parameter found in general relativity,” the contrast concerns the arbitrariness permitted by GR taken in abstracto (Callender and Weingard, `Bohmian Model,“ p. 227). GR cosmic time and Bohmian cosmic time may well be extensionally equivalent, even though intensionally diverse.
According to Valentini, “…the absolute 3-space along which subquantum nonlocality acts… will necessarily coincide with the observed rest-frame defined by the uniform microwave background. We therefore predict that, if the nonlocality ever becomes directly observable, it will be found to propagate along the hypersurface defined by the observed cosmological rest frame. (Note that York slicing coincides with cosmological rest for a Friedmann model.)” (Valentini, “Pilot-Wave Theory,” p. 63).
S. J. Prokhovnik, “A Cosmological Basis for Bell’s Views on Quantum and Relativistic Physics,” in Bell ‘s Theorem and Foundations of Modern Physics, ed. A. van der Merwe, F. Selleri, and G. Tarozzi ( Singapore: World Scientific, 1992 ), pp. 388–396.
H. A. Lorentz, The Einstein Theory of Relativity ( New York: Brentano’s, 1920 ), pp. 61–62.
In Milne’s kinematic theory of relativity, the material universe is viewed as expanding into a static, empty 3-space. But even here, it is not physical space which is expanding in metaphysical space. And Milne’s theory preserves a cosmic time. In any case, such a move on our objector’s part would mean his abandoning Einsteinian Relativity Theory, which was supposed to be the basis for the whole objection to absolute becoming which is at issue here. For Milne’s theory see E. A. Milne, Kinematic Relativity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948); idem, Modern Cosmology and the Christian Idea of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). For discussion, see Grünbaum, Space and Time,chap. 13.
See Fitzgerald’s critique of Swinbume’s failure to posit a privileged space as well as a privileged time on the basis of the Robertson-Walker metric. Swinburne cannot have it both ways, he asserts. “Either the Robertson-Walker frame… gives us privileged cosmic instants and also privileged places lasting through time, or it gives us neither” (Paul Fitzgerald, Critical notice of Space and Time, by R. Swinburne, Philosophy of Science 43 [ 1976 ]: 631 ).
John Barrow, The World within the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) p. 234. Barrow’s further discussion of which is the fundamental cosmic time has to do more with cosmic timekeeping and, despite his disclaimers, treats cosmic time on the pattern of Zeno’s paradoxes, as is pointed out by Andreas Bartels, Kausalitätsverletzungen in allgemeinrelativistischen Raumzeiten, Erfahrung and Denken 68 ( Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 1986 ), p. 112.
David Park, “What Is Time?” in Time, Creation, and World Order, ed. Mogens Wegener, Acta Jutlandica 74:1, Humanities Series 72 ( Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1999 ), p. 22.
Evandro Agazzi, “The Universe as a Scientific and Philosophical Problem,” in Philosophy and the Origin and Evolution of the Universe, ed. Evandro Agazzi and Alberto Cordero, Synthèse Library 217 ( Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991 ), p. 29.
Frank J. Tipler, “The Sensorium of God: Newton and Absolute Space,” in Newton and the New Direction of Science, ed. G. V. Coyne, M. Heller, and J. Zyncinski ( Vatican City: Specola Vaticana, 1988 ), p. 222.
Ibid., p. 224. Prokhovnik offers a more qualified endorsement: “Of course, cosmic time has no absolute connotation—it relates directly to the apparent nature of the cosmos—but it does provide a universal measure of time which `flows’ uniformly and independently of any local phenomena, and so fulfills Newton’s desideratum for the nature of the ultimate variable associated with all physical changes” (Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe,p. 127). On the basis of cosmic time’s universality, Michael Shallis is also willing to say that it is like Newton’s absolute time (Shallis, “Time and Cosmology,” p. 71).
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,pp. 34–36, 283–302.
Fitzgerald, “Truth about Tomorrow’s Sea-Fight,” p. 326; see also Alan Padgett, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time, ( New York: St. Martin’s, 1992 ), pp. 128–129.
Dorato also makes this point (Dorato, Time and Reality,p. 204).
E. A. Milne, Relativity, Gravitation and World Structure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935); idem. A. Milne, Relativity, Gravitation and World Structure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935); idem, “A Newtonian Expanding Universe,” Quarterly Journal of Mathematics 5 (1934): 64–72;
W. H. McCrea, “On the Significance of Newtonian Cosmology,” Astronomical Journal 60 (1955): 271–274.
For discussion see Peter T. Landsberg and David A. Evans, Mathematical Cosmology: An Introduction ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977 ).
Pierre Kerszberg, “On the Alleged Equivalence between Newtonian and Relativistic Cosmology,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1987): 349.
H. Bondi, Cosmology,2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 89. 129 E. L. Schücking, “Newtonian Cosmology,” Texas Quarterly 10 (1967): 274.
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Craig, W.L. (2001). God, Time, and Relativity. In: God, Time, and Eternity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1715-1_7
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