With his first paper on special relativity, Albert Einstein demonstrated that our intuitions have no place in the study of spacetime. But even today we have not reached a consensus on the profound implications of relativity. Eternalism, a view in which past, present and future are equally real, has long been the orthodoxy amongst physicists, but this view is now being challenged at the cutting edge. In this course Dr Eleanor Knox builds up a framework in special relativity to ask: can we recover the present?

By the end of the course, you will have learned:

• The two postulates of special relativity.
• The consequences of special relativity (time dilation and length contraction).
• How Minkowski space and lightcones are used to represent Einstein’s spacetime.
• How the past, present, and future are seen in the major perspectives on spacetime.
• McTaggart’s A and B series.
• How the block universe might be avoidable.

As part of the course, there are in-video quiz questions to consolidate your learning, suggested further readings to explore topics further, discussion boards to have your say, and an end-of-course assessment set by Dr Eleanor Knox.

IAI Academy courses are designed to be challenging but accessible to the interested student. No specialist knowledge is required.

Eleanor Knox

Philosopher of science Eleanor Knox is a Professor of Philosophy at King's College London. Her work focuses on philosophy of space time physics, explanation and intertheoretic relations.

• Knox, E., Metaphysics of Time: Space, Time, and the Nature of Reality, (London: Routledge, 2020).
• Einstein, A., Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, (London: Methuen, 1920).
• Smart, J. J. C., Philosophy and Scientific Realism, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963).
• Savitt, S., Time’s Arrows Today, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
• Callender, C., Time, Reality and Experience, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
• Earman, J., World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
• McTaggart, J. M. E., The Unreality of Time, in Mind, 17(68), 1908.
• Arntzenius, F., Time in Physics: The Philosophy of Space-Time, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021, online).