The Physics and Philosophy of Directionless Time

Thu 12 February

Wolfson College

Stuff happens. It’s hard to think of a more general description of reality.

We think of the universe as beginning in the past and evolving towards the future. However, despite its centrality to our understanding of the world, this picture of time is surprisingly poorly motivated by physics.

This talk sets out the various ways physics suggests time is fundamentally directionless, with no distinction between earlier and later, and no direction in which reality unfolds. This talk will present a philosophical account of directionless time, outlining what it entails about the nature of causality and scientific explanation, and how it relates to our own experience of time, and argue that the view is far less radical than it sounds.

Speaker:
Dr Matt Farr is Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He researches the nature of time and causation, particularly the directionality of time, the role of causality in physics, and the psychology of time.

Matt’s research has been published in leading journals in philosophy, physics and psychology, and he is currently writing a book on the philosophy and physics of time direction.

Matt received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bristol, and has held research fellowships at the University of Sydney and University of Queensland.

Details:
The event is open to all, is free to attend and there is no need to book.

Access:
This event will take place in the Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.

Contact:
If you have any questions, please contact our events team - events@wolfson.cam.ac.uk

Cost: Free