Price shows that for over a century physicists have fallen repeatedly into the same trap when trying to understand the arrow of time: treating the past and future in different ways. To overcome this natural tendency, we need to imagine a point outside time - an Archimedean viewpoint as Price calls it - from which to think about the arrow of time in an unbiased way.
Taking this Archimedean viewpoint Price asks why we assume that the past affects the future but not vice-versa, and argues that causation is much more symmetric in microphysics: to a limited extent - the future does affect the past. Thus Price avoids the usual paradoxes of quantum mechanics, without succumbing to the rival paradoxes of causal loops and time travel.
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Price shows that for over a century physicists have fallen repeatedly into the same trap when trying to understand the arrow of time: treating the past and future in different ways. To overcome this natural tendency, we need to imagine a point outside time - an Archimedean viewpoint as Price calls it - from which to think about the arrow of time in an unbiased way.
Taking this Archimedean viewpoint Price asks why we assume that the past affects the future but not vice-versa, and argues that causation is much more symmetric in microphysics: to a limited extent - the future does affect the past. Thus Price avoids the usual paradoxes of quantum mechanics, without succumbing to the rival paradoxes of causal loops and time travel.
Imprint | Oxford UniversityPress |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | July 1996 |
Availability | Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days |
First published | April 1996 |
Authors | Huw Price |
Dimensions | 244 x 163 x 27mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Hardcover |
Pages | 320 |
Edition | New |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-19-510095-2 |
Barcode | 9780195100952 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-19-510095-6 |