Abstract
Afinal issue now needs to be engaged: Given our commitment to theism, do we have some idea of what measured time coincides with God’s metaphysical time, or in other words, what clock time is the true time? The answer to this question will take us from Special into General Relativity, as we seek to gain a cosmic perspective on time.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
A. Einstein, “The Foundations of General Relativity Theory,” in General Theory of Relativity,ed. C. W. Kilmister, Selected Readings in Physics (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1973), pp. 141–172. The original paper appeared in Annalen der Physik 49 (1916): 769. On the ambiguity of Einstein’s statement of the Special Principle of Relativity, recall the discussion on pp. 25–27.
Ibid., p. 148.
See the very frank discussion by Hermann Bondi, “Is ‘General Relativity’ Necessary for Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation?” in Relativity, Quanta, and Cosmology in the Development of the Scientific Thought of Albert Einstein,ed. Francesco De Finis, 2 vols. (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1979), pp. 179–186. According to Bondi, any notion of equivalence between inertial and accelerated observers is “physically meaningless,” which goes to show “how void of significance any general principle of relativity must be.” But because “a physically sound formulation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation exists not involving the physically empty concept of general relativity,” one may admire and embrace Einstein’s theory of gravitation while rejecting his route to it. “It is perhaps rather late to change the name of Einstein’s theory of gravitation, but general relativity is a physically meaningless phrase that can only be viewed as a historical memento of a curious philosophical observation.”
Einstein, “Foundations of General Relativity,” p. 143.
Ibid.
Isaac Newton, The Principia, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, with a Guide by I. Bernard Cohen ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 ), p. 414.
Ibid., pp. 6–7.
Einstein, “Foundations of General Relativity,” pp. 143–144.
See his lucid commentary in Michael Friedman, Foundations of Spacetime Theories ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 ), pp. 204–215.
Einstein, “Foundations of General Relativity,” p. 143.
Ibid., p. 144.
Ibid., pp. 144–145.
See Friedman, Spacetime Theories,pp. 191–204 for the following critique.
Kurt Gödel, “A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist,ed. P. A. Schilpp, Library of Living Philosophers 7 (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1949), pp. 557–562; I. Ozsvâth and E. Schucking, “Finite Rotating Universe,” Nature 193 (1962): 1168–1169.
Friedman, Spacetime Theories,pp. 207–214.
Ibid., pp. 208–209, 210–211.
Ibid., p. 17.
A. Einstein, “Ether and the Theory of Relativity,” in Sidelights on Relativity ( New York: Dover Publications, 1903 ), pp. 16–17.
A. Einstein, “Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity,” in The Principle of Relativity,by Albert Einstein, et al.,with Notes by A. Sommerfeld, trans. W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery (rep. ed.: New York: Dover Publications, 1952), pp. 177–188.
Bemulf Kanitscheider, Kosmologie (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam., Jun., 1984), p. 155. See also G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, 2d ed. ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980 ), pp. 283–284.
Willem de Sitter, “On the Relativity of Inertia,” in Koninglijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Amsterdam. Afdeling Wis-en Natuurkundige Wetenschappen. Proceedings of the Section of Science 19 (1917): 1217–1225.
Arthur S. Eddington, The Expanding Universe ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952 ), p. 46.
A. Friedmann, “Über die Krümmung des Raumes,” Zeitschrii t fir Physik 10 (1922): 377–386.
A. S. Eddington, “On the Instability of Einstein’s Spherical World,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 19 (1930): 668–678.
Albert Einstein, quoted in George Gamow, My World Line ( New York: Viking Press, 1970 ), p. 44.
Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation ( San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973 ), pp. 713–714.
See Kanitscheider, Kosmologie,pp. 182–197.
See Peter Kroes, Time: Its Structure and Role in Physical Theories, Synthèse Library 179 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985 ), pp. 60–96.
Such is the treatment of Friedman, Spacetime Theories,for all the theories he discusses, including Newtonian spacetime (pp. 71–124).
There are three choices of time parameter available in GR, according to Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler: (i) the original time variable t. “This quantity gives directly proper time elapsed since the start of the expansion. It is the time available for the formation of galaxies. It is also the time during which radioactive decay and other physical processes have been taken place” (Gravitation,p. 730). (ii) the expansion factor R(t). Since this factor grows with time, it serves to distinguish one phase of the expansion from another, thus serving as a parametric measure of time in its own right. The ratio of R(t) at two different times gives the ratio of the dimensions of the universe at those two times. (iii) the arc-parameter measure of time r)(t). During the time interval dt,a photon traveling on hypersphere of radius R(t) covers an arc in radians equal to dirdt/R(t). (In a model where the curvature constant k=0 or the words “hypersphere” and “arc” should be replaced with their appropriate analogues.) Small values of the arc parameter indicate early times in the universe, large values later times.
Kroes, Time, p. 96. Dorato also maintains that “cosmic time would be an ideal candidate with respect to which to define a world-wide, mind-independent becoming” (Mauro Dorato, Time and Reality: Spacetime Physics and the Objectivity of Temporal Becoming, Collana di Studi Epistemoligici II [Bologna: CLUEB, 1995 ], p. 189 ).
See S. J. Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), chaps. 4, 5, 6.
Misner, Thome, and Wheeler, Gravitation,p. 714.
Ibid., pp. 715–716.
Milton K. Munitz, Cosmic Understanding ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986 ), pp. 97–98.
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,p. 371.
Kanitscheider, Kosmologie,pp. 186–187.
Martin J. Rees, “The Size and Shape of the Universe,” in Some Strangeness in the Proportion, ed. Harry Woolf (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1980 ), p. 293.
Ibid., p. 301.
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,p. 307.
S. W. Hawking, “The Existence of Cosmic Time Functions,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 308 (1968): 433–435.
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,p. 302.
Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation,Cambridge Science Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920; rep. ed.: 1987), p. 168.
Adolf Grünbaum asserts, “In short, it is because no relations of absolute simultaneity exist to be measured that measurement cannot disclose them; it is not the mere failure of measurement to disclose them that constitutes their non-existence, much as that failure is evidence for their non-existence” (Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time, 2d ed., Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 12 [Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1973], p. 368). Richard Swinburne plumps for a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of SR, commenting, “One can describe the Universe of Special Relativity perfectly intelligibly by supposing that its equations show a limit to our knowledge of absolute simultaneity, not a limit to its existence” (Richard Swinburne, Space and Time,2d ed. [London: Macmillan, 1981], p. 201).
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,p. 284.
Paul Fitzgerald, “The Truth about Tomorrow’s Sea Fight,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 325.
Ibid., p. 326. Fitzgerald later rejected the identification of cosmic time with God’s time because cosmic time, being a statistical matter based on mean matter density, allows a range of regions of the universe to be classed as simultaneous. “This means that strictly speaking, several mutually incompatible ‘cosmic times’ will be definable, each equally usable for the gross purposes of the astronomer, and none sufficiently preferable to the others to justify identifying it with ‘God’s time”‘ (Idem, “Relativity Physics and the God of Process Philosophy,” Process Studies 2 [19721: 256). The problem is that Fitzgerald is still operating with a reductionistic view of time which equates time with physical time. But if God’s time is metaphysical and cosmic time a sensible measure thereof, then it does not matter, as Newton saw, whether this measure is more or less accurate. Cosmic time gives a rough measure of God’s time. Moreover, as a result of measurements made since the launch of the COBE satellite in 1989, we now have very precise measurements of the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, thereby honing the measure of cosmic time.
Kroes, Time,pp. 15–16.
Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation,p. 34. Cf. Graves’s comment that it makes no difference to the validity of the (tensor) initial value equations how we define a hypersurface or what sort of coordinates we use on it. The choice of an initial hypersurface is ‘wholly arbitrary” (John Cowperthwaite Graves, The Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Relativity Theory,with a Foreword by John Archibald Wheeler [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971], pp. 250–252). So also Vesslin Petkov, “Simultaneity, Conventionality, and Existence,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (1989): 75, who agrees with Putnam that all events are therefore equally real.
Michael Shallis, “Time and Cosmology,” in The Nature of Time, ed. Raymond Flood and Michael Lockwood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 68–69. Cf. Asghar Qadir and John Archibald Wheeler, “York’s Cosmic Time Versus Proper Time as Relevant to Changes in Dimensionless ‘Constants,’ K-Meson Decay, and the Unity of the Black Hole and Big Crunch,” in From SU(3) to Gravity, ed. Errol Gotsman and Gerald Tauber ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 ), pp. 383–394.
Kroes, Time,p. 16.
Ibid., p. 17.
Of course, as Dorato points out, the existence of a plurality of cosmic times which is merely the result of change of origin or a change of scale within the global time function does nothing to undermine the objectivity of cosmic time (Dorato, Time and Reality,p. 201; cf. p 192, n. 12).
P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology and Black Hole Evaporations,” in The Study of Time III,ed. J. T. Fraser, N. Lawrence, and D. Park (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1978), p. 76. I have corrected the spelling errors in the quotation.
Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe; idem, “The Logic of the Clock Paradox,” paper presented at the International Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, “Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory,” Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, 16–19 September, 1988; idem, “The Twin Paradoxes of Special Relativity—Their Resolution and Implications,” Foundations of Physics (Preprint). Cf Swinburne, Space and Time,chaps. 11, 12.
Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe,p. 53.
Prokhovnik, “Twin Paradoxes,” pp. 8–9.
Michael Ciaran Duffy, “The Modified Vortex Sponge: a Classical Analogue for General Relativity,” paper presented at the International Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, “Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory,” Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, 16–19 September, 1988. According to the eminent Italian physicist Franco Selleri, “the absence of the notion of an ether has important, negative consequences for the possibility of our rationally understanding the world of physics and notably the nature of time” (Franco Selleri, “Le principe de la relativité et la nature du temps,” Fusion 66 [1997]: 54). Selleri’s article is strikingly confirmatory of the understanding of SR defended in this book.
Michael Heller, Zbigniew Klimek, and Konrad Rudnicki, “Observational Foundations for Assumptions in Cosmology,” in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data, ed. M. S. Longair ( Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974 ), p. 3.
Prokhovnik, Light in Einstein’s Universe,pp. 76–78, 126; so also Geoffery Builder, “Ether and Relativity,” Australian Journal of Physics 11 (1958): 279–297, reprinted in Speculations in Science and Technology 2 (1979): 230–242.
Heller, et al.,“Foundations for Assumptions in Cosmology,” pp. 4–5.
Ibid., p. 4.
G. F. Smoot, M. Y. Gorenstein, and R. A. Muller, “Detection of Anisotropy in the Cosmic Blackbody Radiation,” Physical Review Letters 39 (1977): 899.
Kanitscheider, Kosmologie,p. 256.
Reza Mansouri and Roman U. Sexl, “A Test of the Theory of Special Relativity: I. Simultaneity and Clock Synchronization,” General Relativity and Gravitation 8 (1977): 497–498.
Henryierce Stapp, pp, “Quantum Mechanics, Local Causality, and Process Philosophy,” Process Studies 7 (1977): 176. In order to rescue the relativity of simultaneity, Stapp is driven to decouple temporal order from the order of coming into existence. Not only is this expedient counter-intuitive; it is ultimately futile, since in some frame temporal order will coincide with the absolute order of becoming, and thereby that frame will be distinguished.
H. Hönl and H. Dehnen, “The Aporias of Cosmology and the Attempts at Overcoming Them by Nonstandard Models,” in Old and New Questions in Physics, Cosmology, Philosophy, and Theoretical Biology, ed. Alwyn van der Merwe ( New York: Plenum Press, 1983 ), p. 150.
P. A. M. Dirac, “Is There an Aether?” Nature 168 (29 November 1951): 906–907; cf. P. A. M. Dirac and L. Infeld, “Is There an Aether?” Nature 169 (26 April 1952 ): 772.
R. Rompe and H.-J. Treder, “Is Physics at the Threshold of a New Stage of Evolution?” in Quantum, Space and Time—The Quest Continues, ed. Asim O. Barut, Alwyn van der Merwe, and Jean-Pierre Vigier, Cambridge Monographs on Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 603604. See also Alexander W. Stem, “Space, Field, and Ether in Contemporary Physics,” Science 116 (November 1952 ): 493–496.
Edmund Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, 2 vols. (rep. ed.: New York: Humanities Press, 1973 ), I:v.
Ibid., p. 174.
Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity, Aristotelian Society Series 13 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994 ), p. 4.
The reader may note that Einstein’s attitude toward quantum mechanical descriptions in quantum theory was thus the precise opposite of his positivistic attitude toward absolute simultaneity in relativity theory! This strange inconsistency was not lost on others, who queried Einstein about it, only to receive the reply, “A good joke should not be repeated!”
A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, “Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 47 (1935): 777, reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, ed. John Archibald Wheeler and Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Princeton Series in Physics ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 ), p. 138.
J. S. Bell, “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox,” Physics 1 (1964): 195–200, reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement,pp. 403–408.
Ibid., p. 403.
See Main Aspect and Philippe Grangier, “Experiments on Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-type correlations with pairs of visible photons,” in Quantum Concepts in Space and Time,ed. R. Penrose and C. J. Isham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 1–15; W. Tittel, J. Brendel, N. Gisin, and H. Zbinden, “Long Distance Bell-type Tests Using Energy-Time Entangled Photons,” Physical Review A 59/6 (1999): 4150–4163.
Bell, “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox,” p. 403.
Alastair I. M. Rae, Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality? ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 ), p. 45.
See Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1985 ), pp. 234–236.
Euan Squires, The Mystery of the Quantum World (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1986), p. 100; cf. p. 102. 85 Bell, “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox,” p. 107.
Henry Stapp to D. R. Griffin, April 16, 1992, cited in David Ray Griffin, “Hartshorne, God, and Relativity Physics,” Process Studies 21 (1992): 109–110.
James T. Cushing, Philosophical Concepts in Physics ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ), p. 337.
David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics ( London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1957 ), p. 97.
Cushing remarks, “The prevalence of an empiricist-operationalist philosophical tendency among Heisenberg, Pauli, and Bohr can be traced in part (somewhat ironically, given Einstein’s later view) back to Einstein’s 1905 relativity papers. This operationalist approach, one aspect of which was an eschewal of unobservable entities in a theory, seems to have made a great impression and to have exerted a profound influence upon young German physicists” (Cushing, Philosophical Concepts in Physics,p. 287). In fact, Heisenberg described his abandonment of the “Kantian category of causality” as the natural continuation of Einstein’s overthrow of Kantian space and time as forms of intuition! (Mara Beller, “Bohm and the ‘Inevitability’ of Acausality,” in Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal,ed. James T. Cushing, Arthur Fine, and Sheldon Goldstein, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 184 [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996], p. 214).
Beller, “Bohm,” p. 220.
Ibid., p. 221.
Craig Callender and Robert Weingard, “The Bohmian Model of Quantum Cosmology,” in PSA 1994, ed. David Hull, Micky Forbes, and Richard M. Burian ( East Lansing, Mich.: Philosophy of Science Association, 1994 ), p. 218.
Ibid., p. 224.
See Niels Bohr, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 48 (1935): 696–702, reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement,pp. 145–151.
Such assertions may not even be true. It is very difficult to see why the entanglement-based quantum cryptography suggested by the experiments of the Geneva Group (see note 80) would not involve the instantaneous transmission of information even in the absence of superluminal propagation of causal influences. James Franson of Johns-Hopkins, when asked how identical random-number sequences generated simultaneously by widely separated particles differs from information, could only say, “That’s a difficult question, and I don’t think anyone could give you a coherent answer. Quantum theory is confirmed by experiments, and so is relativity theory, which prevents us from sending messages faster than light. I don’t know that there’s any intuitive explanation of what that means” (“Far Apart, 2 Particles Respond Faster than Light,” New York Times [22 July 1997], p. CI).
See Henry P. Stapp, “Are Faster-Than-Light Influences Necessary?” in Quantum Mechanics versus Local Realism, ed. Franco Selleri, Physics of Atoms and Molecules (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), pp. 71–72, who points out that Bohr and Heisenberg themselves effectively reject the EPR locality assumption. See the very interesting statement by Werner Heisenberg, The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory ( New York: Dover, 1930 ), p. 39.
Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality,p. 196; cf. pp. 137–138, 144.
Ibid., p. 239. Cf. P. H. Eberhard, ‘Bell’s Theorem and the Different Concepts of Locality,” II Nuovo Cimento 46B (1978): 392–419.
Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality,p. 220.
Ibid., p. 202.
Karl Popper, “A Critical Note on the Greatest Days of Quantum Theory,” in Quantum, Space and Time, p. 54; cf. idem, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982), pp. xviii, 20. Even Popper’s use of the expression “infinite velocity” is misleading, since the salient point is the simultaneous collapse of the correlated two wave functions, as if they were joined by an influence of infinite velocity. See Abner Shimony, “Metaphysical Problems in the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics,” International Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1978): 13.
Popper, Quantum Theory,p. 29. Actually, as Maudlin points out, one may either return to a Newtonian spacetime and show how electromagnetic effects in rods and clocks conceal the fundamental Newtonian structure or else one can retain the relativistic metric at the fundamental level and add some spacetime structure, such as preferred foliation, to it. Maudlin himself prefers to abandon relativity by means of the latter route because it is more straightforward. (Maudlin, “Space-Time in the Quantum World,” p. 297; cf. pp. 295, 306). On either account, as Callender notes, temporal becoming “could occur either with respect to this extra structure or with respect to the underlying neo-Newtonian structure” (Callender, “Shedding Light on Time,” p. 8).
Ibid., p. 30.
James T. Cushing, “What Measurement Problem?” in Perspectives on Quantum Reality,ed. Rob Clifton, University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science 57 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), p. 175; cf. James T. Cushing, Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony,Science and Its Conceptual Foundations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 188–192. Popper also points out that there are “independent arguments” for a return to Lorentz’s approach, as required by EPR, “especially since the discovery of the microwave background radiation” (Popper, Quantum Theory,p. 30).
David Bohm to D. R. Griffin, May 17, 1992, cited in Griffin, “God and Relativity Physics,” p. 110. When Callender and Weingard contrast the cosmic time of Bohmian cosmology with “the arbitrary parameter found in general relativity,” the contrast concerns the arbitrariness permitted by GR taken in abstracto (Callender and Weingard, “Bohmian Model,” p. 227). GR cosmic time and Bohmian cosmic time may well be extensionally equivalent, even though intensionally diverse.
S. J. Prokhovnik, “A Cosmological Basis for Bell’s Views on Quantum and Relativistic Physics,” preprint.
H. A. Lorentz, The Einstein Theory of Relativity ( New York: Orentano’s, 1920 ), pp. 61–62.
In Milne’s kinematic theory of relativity, the material universe is viewed as expanding into a static, empty 3-space. But even here, it is not physical space which is expanding in metaphysical space. And Milne’s theory preserves a cosmic time. In any case, such a move on our objector’s part would mean his abandoning Einsteinian relativity theory, which was supposed to be the basis for the whole objection to absolute becoming which is at issue here. For Milne’s theory see E. A. Milne, Kinematic Relativity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948); idem, Modern Cosmology and the Christian Idea of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). For discussion, see Grünbaum, Space and Time,chap. 13.
See Fitzgerald’s critique of Swinbume’s failure to posit a privileged space as well as a privileged time on the basis of the Robertson-Walker metric. Swinburne cannot have it both ways, he asserts. “Either the Robertson-Walker framechrw(133)gives us privileged cosmic instants and also privileged places lasting through time, or it gives us neither” (Paul Fitzgerald, Critical notice of Space and Time,by R. Swinburne, Philosophy of Science 43 [19761: 631).
John Barrow, The World within the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) p. 234. Barrow’s further discussion of which is the fundamental cosmic time has to do more with cosmic timekeeping and, despite his disclaimers, treats cosmic time on the pattern of Zeno’s paradoxes, as is pointed out by Andreas Bartels, Kausalitätsverletzungen in allgemeinrelativistischen Raumzeiten, Erfahrung and Denken 68 ( Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 1986 ), p. 112.
David Park, “What is Time?” in Time, Creation, and World Order, Acta Jutlandica 74:1, Humanistic Series 72 (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1999 ), p. 22.
Evandro Agazzi, “The Universe as a Scientific and Philosophical Problem,” in Philosophy and the Origin and Evolution of the Universe, ed. Evandro Agazzi and Alberto Cordero, Synthèse Library 217 ( Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991 ), p. 29.
Frank J. Tipler, “The Sensorium of God: Newton and Absolute Space,” in Newton and the New Direction of Science, ed. G. V. Coyne, M. Heller, and J. Zyncinski ( Vatican City: Specola Vaticana, 1988 ), p. 222.
Whitrow, Natural Philosophy of Time,pp. 34–36, 283–302.
Fitzgerald, “Truth about Tomorrow’s Sea-Fight,” p. 326; see also Alan Padgett, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time, ( New York: St. Martin’s, 1992 ), pp. 128–129.
Dorato also makes this point (Dorato, Time and Reality,p. 204).
Munitz, Cosmic Understanding,p. 96.
Kroes, Time,pp. 17–18.
E. A. Milne, Relativity, Gravitation and World Structure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935); idem, “A Newtonian Expanding Universe,” Quarterly Journal of Mathematics 5 (1934): 64–72; W. H. McCrea, “On the Significance of Newtonian Cosmology,” Astronomical Journal 60 (1955): 271–274. For discussion see Peter T. Landsberg and David A. Evans, Mathematical Cosmology: An Introduction ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977 ).
Pierre Kerszberg, “On the Alleged Equivalence between Newtonian and Relativistic Cosmology,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1987): 349.
H. Bondi, Cosmology,2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 89. 129 E. L. Schucking, “Newtonian Cosmology,” Texas Quarterly 10 (1967): 274.
Bondi, Cosmology,p. 105; Kerszberg, “Equivalence,” p. 349.
Bondi, Cosmology,pp. 70–71.
Kerszberg, “Equivalence,” p. 376.
Munitz, Cosmic Understanding,p. 157.
Kanitscheider, Kosmologie,p. 193.
Ibid., p. 194.
Padgett, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time,pp. 203–205.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Craig, W.L. (2001). God’s Time and General Relativity. In: Craig, W.L. (eds) Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 84. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3532-2_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3532-2_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5602-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3532-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive