David Albert’s 2000 book Time and Chance attempts to account for some of the most intractable problems in theoretical physics, in particular those arising from the direction of time. This collection assembles essays exploring and debating Albert’s ideas, now recognized as among the most important recent contributions to the philosophy of science.
Philosophers debate the ideas and implications of one of the most important contemporary works in the philosophy of science, David Albert’s Time and Chance. In the twenty-odd years since its publication, David Albert’s Time and Chance has been recognized as one of the most significant contemporary contributions to the philosophy of science. Here, philosophers and physicists explore the implications of Albert’s arguments and debate his solutions to some of the most intractable problems in theoretical physics. Albert has attempted to make sense of the tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of that world. In particular, he is concerned with problems arising from causality and the direction of time: defying common sense, almost all our basic scientific ideas suggest that whatever can happen can just as naturally happen in reverse. Focusing on Newtonian mechanics, Albert provides a systematic account of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. He also generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and suggests a deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The essays included in The Probability Map of the Universe develop, explore, and critique this account, while Albert himself replies. The result is an insightful discussion of the foundations of statistical mechanics and its relation to cosmology, the direction of time, and the metaphysical nature of laws and objective probability.
Using space photographs and scaled maps, demonstrates the actual size of objects in the cosmos, from Buzz Aldrin's historic footprint on the Moon to the entire visible universe, with a gatefold of the Gott-Juric Map of the Universe.
This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students.
Featuring chapters on the latest developments in fifteen core subjects in analytic philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy is an essential guide for all those working in the field today. Introducing its history and looking ahead to new research directions, this companion brings together a team of internationally renowned philosophers to explore the major concepts, thinkers and areas of inquiry in the analytic tradition With an extensive glossary, an annotated bibliography, a timeline of major events and publications, and a guide to further resources, this comprehensive companion is ideal for use on courses. Broken down into three parts, it covers: The history of analytic philosophy, from Frege, Moore and Russell to Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle and beyond the more recent work of four influential American philosophers: Quine, Davidson, Putnam and Kripke Current analytic philosophy in action in subjects such as philosophy of mind and language, moral and political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of science, mathematics, perception, free will and personal identity Recent trends and developments such as the rise of specialisation and science, self-consciousness and analytic metaphysics Broaching the controversial question of what analytical philosophy is, explaining how it differs from Continental Philosophy and exploring the extent to which it in a state of crisis, The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy presents an authoritative introduction to the origins and future of Anglo-America's dominant philosophical tradition. Now available in paperback, this edition includes updated references and a chapter on Ethics and the problem of overdemandingnes.
This book provides a comprehensive investigation into the concept of typicality and its significance for physics and the philosophy of science. It identifies typicality as a fundamental way of reasoning, central to how natural laws explain and are tested against phenomena. The book discusses various applications of typicality to foundational questions in physics and beyond.These include: a unified interpretation of objective probabilities in classical mechanics and quantum mechanics a detailed discussion of Boltzmann's statistical mechanics, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics a novel account of the asymmetry of causation and the arrow of time Finally, the book turns to the question: "What are laws of nature"? It argues that typicality extends to a powerful way of reasoning in metaphysics that can and should inform our commitments about the fundamental ontology of the world. On this basis, it develops an argument against the Humean best system account, according to which laws of nature are merely an efficient summary of contingent regularities.
A prominent issue in many contemporary philosophy of religion debates concerns whether the universe has a Designer. This book moves the discussion ahead in a significant way by devising an original deductive formulation of the Teleological Argument (TA) which demonstrates that the following are the only possible categories of hypotheses concerning fine-tuning and order: (i) chance, (ii) regularity, (iii) combinations of regularity and chance, (iv) uncaused, and (v) design. This book also demonstrates that there are essential features of each category such that, while the alternatives to design are unlikely, the Design Hypothesis is not, and that one can argue for design by exclusion without having to first assign a prior probability for design. By combining the TA with the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) which it defends against various objections, this book responds to the God-of-the-gaps objection by demonstrating that the conclusion of the KCA-TA is not based on gaps which can be filled by further scientific progress, but follows from deduction and exclusion. This is an open access book.
Chance and Temporal Asymmetry presents a collection of cutting-edge research papers in the metaphysics of science, tackling the perplexing philosophical problems raised by recent progress in the physics and metaphysics of chance and time. How do the probabilities found in fundamental physics and the probabilities of the special sciences relate to one another? Can a constraint on the initial conditions of the universe underwrite the second law of thermodynamics? How does contemporary quantum theory reframe debates over the nature of chance? What grounds do we have for believing in a fundamental direction to time? And how do all these questions connect up? The aim of the volume is both to survey and summarize recent debates about chance and temporal asymmetry and to push them forward. Familiar approaches are subjected to searching new critiques, and bold new proposals are made concerning (inter alia) the semantics of chance-attributions, the justification of the Principal Principle connecting chance and degree of belief, and the source of the temporal asymmetry of human experience. The contributors include world-leading figures in the field, all presenting new work rather than rehashing old ideas, as well as a number of promising junior scholars. A wide-ranging introduction connects the different chapters together, and provides essential background to the debates they take up. Technicality is kept to a minimum and philosophical and conceptual foundations take centre stage. Chance and Temporal Asymmetry sets the agenda for future work on time and chance, which are central to the emerging sub-field of metaphysics of science. It will be indispensable to graduate students and to specialists in metaphysics and philosophy of science.
This book subjects the traditional concept of law of nature to critical examination. There are two kinds of reasons that invite this reexamination, one deriving from philosophical concerns over the traditional concept, the other motivated by theoretical and practical changes in science. One of the philosophical worries is that the idiom of law of nature, especially when combined with the notion of laws 'governing' individual events and processes, is no longer as intelligible as it used to be in the theistic context in which the formulation of laws became central to science. The traditional concept is also challenged in various ways by contemporary scientific theories such as quantum mechanics, chaos theory and the general theory of relativity. It is no longer clear that there are any universal laws, laws do not always guarantee predictability, and the border between physical and mathematical considerations is constantly shifting. The most difficult challenge, perhaps, is to come up with a scientific explanation of the origin of laws. Wrestling with these intriguing problems, the papers in this volume broaden both our understanding of the natural order and our desiderata of scientific explanation.
The book explores several open questions in the philosophy and the foundations of statistical mechanics. Each chapter is written by a leading expert in philosophy of physics and/or mathematical physics. Here is a list of questions that are addressed in the book:
