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date: 21 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Many scientists, and some philosophers, still accept the canard that there is no such thing as progress in philosophy. There is no better way to scotch this canard than to see how far the philosophy of time has come in the last hundred years. The advance started with two developments at the start of the last century, one in physics and one in metaphysics, Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity, and McTaggart's A- and B-series theory of time and change. They revealed unexpected problems with two basic assumptions about time: that it is independent of space, and that it flows. These revelations, and later work in other areas of physics and philosophy, have greatly changed our ideas about time, and still inform the best work on its philosophy.

Keywords: philosophy of time, metaphysics, special theory of relativity, theory of time and change, post-negation

D. H. Mellor

D. H. Mellor is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.

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