The class will focus on the following problem. How can we explain the temporal asymmetries we experience in everyday life—that coffee cools and ice melts, not the reverse; that light appears in a room after we flip the switch, not before; that we have memories of the past and not the future; that we can causally affect the future but not the past—when the underlying laws of physics are symmetric in time, allowing for the time-reversed behavior we never see? Might there be a unified explanation for the different asymmetries we experience? Answering these questions will require looking into the foundations of classical mechanics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and cosmology. We will also discuss the problem in the context of quantum mechanics.
The problem of the direction of time touches on questions in a variety of areas of philosophy, including philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. Some of the philosophical issues to be discussed include: What are probabilities in physics? What makes for a good scientific explanation? Does time pass? What is the relationship between the picture of the world given to us by physics, and the picture of the world given by our ordinary experience? What is the relationship between physics and other sciences? Readings throughout will be drawn from both physics and philosophy.
About Professor North
JILL NORTH got her BA in physics and philosophy at Yale and her PhD in philosophy at Rutgers. She has previously taught at NYU (as a Bersoff fellow), Yale, and Cornell.She works primarily in philosophy of physics (across a range of theories, including statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, relativity, classical mechanics, and quantum mechanics). She also has interests in metaphysics, especially the metaphysics of physics, and philosophy of science.