Repository | Book | Chapter

The problem of the direction of time can be formulated as the question: what is the direction of time? Motion in space is what has a direction in the primary sense. Its direction is, according to the dictionaries, the course taken by the moving object. Frequently, the direction of spatial motion is described by its destination or another single location such as the North Pole. But such a description is adequate to a certain extent only in instances of rectilinear motion. Certainly, the direction of spatial motion is, as such, not that of time. Yet both directions are closely related, as we shall see. In any case, to understand the concept of direction, one has to reflect upon motion. Let us begin,therefore, by asking what the direction of motion is. It is the ontologist who answers what-questions with respect to categories. Now, there are different ontologies with different categories. I advocate an ontology similar to Russell's comprising the categories of things, facts, and forms. The category of things is subdivided into the categories of individuals and universals and the category of universals further into the categories of nonrelational and relational universals. Facts are either atomic or molecular. There are negative, conjunctive, disjunctive, subjunctive and quantified facts which constitute subcategories of molecular facts (see [9]). My ontology of time and space is not absolutist but relationist, i.e., I hold that these are nothing but relations (relational universals) and that there are no points of space or time, i.e., no spatial and temporal entities belonging to the categories of individuals or non-relational universals. I assume also that every thing (individual) which changes has temporal parts, which are also things (individuals). Otherwise, change would be contradictory, especially as opposite states cannot be related to different points of time because there are no such points in a relationist world.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8875-1_7

Full citation: