This book defends a relational theory of the passage of time. The realist view of passage developed in this book differs from the robust, substantivalist position. According to relationism, passage is nothing over and above the succession of events, one thing coming after another. Causally related events are temporally arranged as they happen one after another along observers’ worldlines. There is no unique global passage but a multiplicity of local passages of time. After setting out this positive argument for relationism, (...) the author deals with five common objections to it: (a) triviality of deflationary passage, (b) a-directionality of passage, (c) the impossibility of experiencing passage, (d) fictionalism about passage, and (e) the incompatibility of passage with perduring objects. (shrink)

A recently published hypothesis on the nature of time by physicist Richard A. Muller seeks to provide an objective account of the present moment and the ‘flow’ of time. Muller also claims that his hypothesis makes testable predictions. It is shown that the predictions offered cannot be used to test Muller’s hypothesis, that the hypothesis does not rate scientific status, has a number of questionable metaphysical premises, and is merely a re-fashioning of the Growing Block theory of time.

ABSTRACT Although the issue of temporality has mainly been studied from Physics, this topic also exhibits diverse interesting aspects that could be addressed from a biological perspective. One possible way of approaching this subject is to examine the kinds of temporalities involved in biological processes. In that vein, the aim of this article is to analyze developmental and evolutionary processes' temporality in different biological fields of study, including a novel area which attempts to integrate the research of those processes. To (...) that end, we propose a taxonomy for the analysis of the temporal characteristics of biological processes. Making use of that taxonomy, we conclude that biological processes' temporality is extremely complex since not only different fields of study present differing temporal characteristics, but also each kind of biological process shows diverse temporalities. These observations point out the pertinence of biological insights and the relevance of Philosophy of Biology's contributions to the study of the extensive and multifaceted issues of time and temporality. (shrink)