What is it about?
Einstein's theories of special and general relativity imply that space and time must be put together to form spacetime. The universe is a four dimensional "place". There is no objective, cosmic-wide "now". This space-time view makes free will impossible in the sense that we cannot be responsible for future outcomes because everything just is. But this apparent implication of relativity theory may not be correct. If probabilistic events occur in nature, due to quantum theory, they may define a cosmic-wide "now". It may be possible to think of time and the world in the way we ordinarily do: what exists is what exists now (cosmic wide). The universe is three dimensional, not four dimensional, with a past and a future. Things in the world are three dimensional; it is histories of things, not things themselves, that are four dimensional, but histories of things only exist because things exist, persist and change.
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Why is it important?
The argument of the paper is important because (a) it makes free will a possibility; and (b) it suggests a way in which general relativity and quantum theory may fit together in a fundamental, unifying theory of quantum gravity.
Perspectives
The problem discussed in this paper - about the implications of relativity theory for the nature of time - is one that I have been thinking about, off and on, ever since I published my second paper in 1968, a paper called "Can there be necessary connections between successive events?" (BJPS, 1968). In that paper I refuted David Hume on causation. I argued that necessary connections between successive events are possible and meaningful, and we should interpret physics as seeking to discover what they are. But it occurred to me that they exist only if the spacetime view of relativity theory is false (although subsequently I had second thoughts about the matter).
Nicholas Maxwell
University College London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Relativity Theory May not Have the Last Word on the Nature of Time: Quantum Theory and Probabilism, December 2016, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-44418-5_9.
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