Time As Space

Augustine says, in Book 11 of his Confessions: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to him who asks, I know not.”  He never says anything like that about space. Nobody ever says anything like that about space.  And (indeed) the thought that there is something infinitely deeper and more mysterious about the question of time than there is about the question of space is all over the place in the history of western philosophy.

And all of this suggests that an understanding of time as space, or as somehow reducible to space, or as somehow emerging from space, might represent a significant advance in our understanding of the world.  And I want to argue here that an offhand remark at the end of an old paper by D. C. Williams – a remark that gestures in the direction of a far more radical and less familiar version of what is often referred to as the “spatialization” of time in the modern physical project – contains the kernel of an understanding like that.

About David Z. Albert

David Z. Albert is the Fredrick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University in New York City.  He has written extensively on various issues at the foundations of physics – particularly on the foundations of quantum mechanics and the direction of time.  He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Rockefeller University in 1981, and his books include Quantum Mechanics and Experience, Time and Chance, After Physics, and A Guess at the Riddle.  He is currently at work on a book about relationalism.  

Wheelchair accessible and service dogs welcome. For disability-related accommodation, email [email protected] or call 510-643-9164 4-7 days in advance of the lecture.