Three Paradoxes Concerning Causality and Time

Parmenides, Leibniz, Einstein/Schrödinger

Bibliographic Data

ID3971672
AuthorsDavid Hyder (Department of Philosophy, 55 Laurier Ave. E., Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume23
Issue5
Pages490-509
Publication date2018-07-04
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe European Legacy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10848770.2018.1449420
OpenAlexW2802394175
LanguageEN
References cited17

Parmenides’ Poem on Nature contains a proof that the world could not have come into being in time, because no explanation could be given for why it would do so at a given time. This same proof reappears in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, where it is directed against Newtonian absolute time. Newtonians, Leibniz explains, believe that time is homogeneous and absolute, but this makes it inexplicable how God could have chosen to create the world on a given day. Similarly, in his correspondence with Schrödinger in the 1930s, Einstein suggests that certain quantum mechanical occurrences, such as the spontaneous decay of a radioactive atom, are absurd, because they cannot be assigned a definite location in time. In Schrödinger’s version on Einstein’s argument, we must say that the cat dies twice: first, inside the box; yet, second, when we open the box. But both accounts cannot be true. Since each of the authors discussed was aware of the approach of his predecessors, they share a structure. In this article, I develop a unified account of all three

Einstein · Epistemology · Physics · Quantum mechanics · Schrödinger's cat · Theoretical physics · Biofield Effects and Biophysics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Quantum Mechanics and Applications · Relativity and Gravitational Theory · Mathematical Physics

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