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Some Points in the Philosophy of Physics: Time, Evolution and Creation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

When I agreed to lecture to-night I stipulated that I might be allowed to interpret the subject announced so as to let my treatment relate less to the subject in general than to some particular aspects which happen to have been interesting me lately. Professor Whitehead, Sir Arthur Eddington, and Sir James Jeans have given to the world brilliant accounts of the present position of physics in relation to mathematics and philosophy. What I have to say bears to their writings, the humble relation of an example to a piece of book-work, or of an application of a theorem to the theorem itself.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1934

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References

page 31 note 1 When A and B have chosen clock-graduations for which the two f's are identical, they may be said to be provided with identical clocks.

page 31 note 2 What are usually called the “Lorentz formulae,” connecting A's and B's assignments of epochs and co-ordinates to any event whatever, can be shown to follow from the above formulae without further assumptions.

page 32 note 1 Statements sometimes made to the contrary, as for example that nebulae may ultimately possess velocities greater than that of light and so pass out of causal connection with the rest of the universe, are erroneous. The error came in owing to a false identification of “cosmic” time with the time of experience.

page 33 note 1 In most current presentations of relativistic cosmology this condition is not imposed, but is verified a posteriori. In my own presentation it is imposed a priori.