Our Changing World

Abstract

Based on the detailed investigations undertaken in this book so far, this chapter paints, with a broader brush, the picture of a world beyond A-theory and the block universe: one where there is no global passage of time, yet change and the past-future distinction are real. Events, considered independently of observers, nevertheless fall into possible and actual, rather than past, present, and future. It is then argued, based on probabilistic considerations, that the time order of causally connectable events is logically, not just physically, required to be invariant. Finally, it is examined whether a Gödel universe, that is, one with closed timelike curves, is possible given local, linear time.