The March of Time by Friedel Weinert

Author:Friedel Weinert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg

It may appear shocking that no free will exists if the world is a four-dimensional stage, on which our life events are entirely predetermined (Petkov 2005, 152)—but only if fatalism and determinism are accepted as deductive consequences of the Special theory. However, a denial of free will follows as little from the principles of the Special theory as the Laplacean demon’s four-dimensional landscape. The conception of the block universe derives from Minkowski’s geometric model, which is based on his world postulate. Its proponents regard the philosophy of being as a deductive consequence, when it is in fact a conceptual consequence of a certain geometric representation of the Special theory. If this is correct then a different representation of the Special theory should lead to different conceptual consequences. Such an alternative view has been in circulation since the early part of the twentieth century; according to it the nature of space–time has to be modelled on the behaviour of light rays (Robb 1914, Cunningham 1915, Carathéodory 1924, Schlick 1917, Reichenbach 1924a/1969). These so-called axiomatic approaches constitute a light geometry, according to which the behaviour of signal propagation, under thermodynamic aspects, forms histories of trajectories in space–time. It should therefore be investigated whether an alternative representation of space–time may give rise to a different inference regarding the nature of space–time. And if it does what follows from this inference regarding the temporality or atemporality of the physical world?

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