Philosophy of time and change

Time is central to physics but does not itself appear to be an object that can be independently observed by empirical methods: all of our observations occur in time. Since antiquity it has been clear that this poses philosophical problems that must be resolved – or at least grappled with – if we are to understand the physical world at all.
This course tells the story of the interplay of philosophy, geometry and science from 1600 to the early twentieth century. Beginning with inheritances from the ancient world, we look at the triumph of analytic geometry and the path it opened for the calculus of Newton and Leibniz, a set of mathematical procedures that seems capable of grasping the essence of temporal change. In the process we see how time, despite occupying a central role in physics, was a contested subject whose reality and objectivity have always been in question.
We will then see how Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity gave rise to new and startling questions, raising doubts about the very existence of a temporal “present”. This has led some later physicists, such as Carlo Rovelli, to declare that time does not exist at all.