The Physics and Philosophy of Directionless Time

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• Dr Matt Farr, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
• Wednesday 12 March 2025, 17:30-18:30
• Gatsby Room, Chancellor's Centre, Wolfson College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Kate Sanders.

Join us for this Wolfson Science Society talk by Dr Matt Farr on something that some do not have enough, and some have too much of – time!

Overview: 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.

This talk is part of the Wolfson College Science Society series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Gatsby Room, Chancellor's Centre, Wolfson College
• Wolfson College Science Society

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