Time’s Discourse: Special Relativity and the Puzzle of Passage

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/vm40xt19v

Abstract

There are two distinct methods of investigating and explaining time: either we can investigate time as we experience it, or we can investigate time as it is best modeled to fit the empirical data. Einstein’s special theory of relativity is intuition’s greatest adversary and the primary challenge to the philosophy of time that I will focus on in this paper. In light of special relativity and the relativity of simultaneity, our two methods of understanding time appear impossible to reconcile; either, it seems, we adopt a version of time that appeals to experience and ignores science, or we adopt a version of time that appeals to science but ignores our experience. Therein the problem lies. I argue that truth is found in the synthesis of these ideas, told from different perspectives. To best illustrate the value of these different perspectives – i.e., different reference frames – I explore this synthesis through a dialogue. We will only be able to completely understand the nature of time by using and appreciating both perspectives; what we once thought was a problem that needed to be reconciled, we will see is in fact null. The scientific and manifest images of time – to borrow the nomenclature of Wilfred Sellars – are not incompatible; they are one.

Creator