Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T02:25:05.329Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Weak Interactions: Asymmetry of Time or Asymmetry in Time?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2023

Jerzy Gołosz
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Get access

Summary

This chapter analyzes the philosophical consequences of the recent discovery of direct violations of the time reversal symmetry of weak interactions. It shows that although we have here an important case of the time asymmetry of one of the fundamental physical forces which could have had a great impact on the form of our world with an excess of matter over antimatter, this asymmetry cannot be treated as the asymmetry of time itself but rather as an asymmetry of some specific physical process in time. The chapter also analyzes the consequences of the new discovery for the general problem of the possible connections between direction (arrow) of time and time-asymmetric laws of nature. These problems are analyzed in the context of Horwich’s (1987) argumentation, trying to show that existence of a time-asymmetric law of nature is a sufficient condition for time to be anisotropic. Instead of Horwich’s sufficient condition for anisotropy of time, it is stressed that for a theory of asymmetry of time to be acceptable it should explain all fundamental time asymmetries: the asymmetry of traces, the asymmetry of causation (which holds although the electrodynamic, strong, and gravitational interactions are invariant under time reversal), and the asymmetry between the fixed past and open future. It is so because the problem of the direction of time has originated from our attempts to understand these asymmetries and every plausible theory of the direction of time should explain them.

Introduction

The asymmetry of time, that is possessing a distinguished direction (its “arrow”), seems to be one of the fundamental properties of time: we have many traces of the past—both in our memory and in the external world—but no traces of the future; events from the past influence those in the future, but we have no evidence of backward causation; the future seems to be open and we cannot definitely change the past. The problem of the asymmetry of time consists in examining the question of whether time really has a distinguished direction and, if it has, in explaining what is the origin of this direction, and especially of the three aforementioned asymmetries.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×