This book engages with major philosophical questions concerning time and space — a framework for the investigation being provided by the debate between the absolutists and the relationists, so between Newton and Leibniz, and their followers. The investigation brings to the fore questions of the nature and reality of time and space, and leads on to more recent debates, as those relating to their possible infinitude, to anti-realism, time travel, temporal parts, geometry, convention, and the direction of time. These in turn raise more general issues, issues involving such concepts as those of id ... More

This book engages with major philosophical questions concerning time and space — a framework for the investigation being provided by the debate between the absolutists and the relationists, so between Newton and Leibniz, and their followers. The investigation brings to the fore questions of the nature and reality of time and space, and leads on to more recent debates, as those relating to their possible infinitude, to anti-realism, time travel, temporal parts, geometry, convention, and the direction of time. These in turn raise more general issues, issues involving such concepts as those of identity, objectivity, causation, facts, and verifiability. Their examination falls within metaphysics, thought of as the investigation and analysis of fundamental philosophical concepts, but there is also metaphysics of a more contentious character, where the subject-matter is provided by propositions which transcend what can be known either through experience or by pure reasoning. In this connection, a central aim is to show how, without dismissing them as nonsensical, we may arrive at a fruitful interpretation of such propositions. While the focus of the work is not primarily on issues which presume an understanding of physical theory, it is hoped that the arguments developed will throw some light on relevant scientific concerns.