Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-299) and index.

Images of Time covers historical, cultural, philosophical, biological, mathematical and physical Images of Time, including classical and quantum mechanics, special and general relativity and cosmology.

Introduction. Plan of this book -- What is time? -- Paradigms -- Events in time -- Temporal ordering and time labels -- The contextuality of temporal ordering -- Arrows of time -- Arrows versus cycles -- Observers and time. Introduction -- Metaphysics, physics, and validation -- Observers and the physical universe -- The contextuality of scientific truth -- Contextual completeness -- Time and contextuality -- The contextuality of the existential quantifier -- Primary observers -- experiments -- Heisenberg cuts -- Generalized propositions -- Subjective images of time. The Greeks -- The dogmatists -- The sceptics -- The Age of Reason -- The classical mechanists -- The metaphysicists -- The mathematical physicists -- Cultural images of time. Cosmogony and theogony -- Stone Age calendars -- The Mesopotamians -- The Middle East -- The Europeans -- Eastern philosophies -- Australian Aboriginal concepts of time -- The Central Americans -- The Far East -- Literary images of time. Introduction -- Literary varieties -- Objective images of time. Introduction -- Optics -- Other factors -- Time in the laboratory -- Laboratory frames and observer choruses -- Chorus protocol -- Superobservers -- Mathematical images of time. Introduction -- Some reasonable requirements -- Sets -- Temporal ordering and ordered sets -- Functions and the mathematical arrow of time -- Cardinality -- The natural numbers -- Linear continua -- Further concepts -- Illusionary images of time. The Block Universe -- Persistence and transtemporal identity -- The problem of time in cosmology -- Causal images of time. Introduction -- Causality -- Blame and responsibility -- Determinism and known unknowns -- Teleology -- Chaos -- Physics and time. Physics and persistence -- Scales of time -- Biological time. Introduction -- The solar model -- Lifetimes of organisms -- Chronobiology -- Biological time travel -- The dimensions of time. Introduction -- Partial differential equations and the flow of information -- The signature of spacetime -- Empirical studies -- The architecture of time. What is temporal architecture? -- Examples of temporal architectures -- Architectural levels of observation -- Absolute time. Introduction -- Clocks -- The reparametrization of time -- Absolute space -- Aristotelian space-time versus Galilean-Newtonian space-time -- Particle worldlines -- The Newtonian mechanical paradigm -- The Euler-Lagrange mechanical paradigm -- Phase space -- Canonical transformation theory -- Infinitesimal transformations -- The reparametrization of time. Introduction -- Temporal parametrization -- Temporal reparametrization -- Action integrals -- Temporal reparametrization in detail -- Reparametrization form invariance -- The extended equations of motion -- Transformation to phase space -- Reparametrized primary identity -- Origins of relativity. Inertial frames -- The speed of light and Galilean transformations -- The Michelson-Morley experiment -- FitzGerald length contraction -- Derivation of FitzGerald length contraction -- FitzGerald time dilation -- Lorentz transformations -- Special relativity. Lorentz transformations -- Simultaneity in special relativity -- Time dilation -- The clock hypothesis -- The Twin Paradox -- Lightcones -- The Klein-Gordon equation -- The causal propagation of special relativistic fields -- Fock-Kemmer front velocity and the memory field -- Generalized transformations. Introduction -- Constraints -- The Michelson-Morley constraint -- Some standard transformations -- The splitting of causality -- Empirical evidence for a preferred frame -- General relativistic time. Space-time versus spacetime -- Lorentzian signature metrics -- Pseudo-Riemannian manifolds -- The Schwarzschild metric -- Gravitational time dilation -- Black hole geometry -- The spinning disc -- Time travel. Introduction -- Information flow -- Tachyons -- Spreadsheet time travel -- The Gödel metric -- Timelike geodesics -- Imaginary time. Introduction -- Minkowski's imaginary time -- Application to wave mechanics -- Propagators and Green's functions -- Path integrals -- Quantum gravity -- Quantum thermodynamics -- Black hole thermodynamics -- Quantum cosmology -- Conclusions -- Irreversible time. Introduction -- Glauber's correlations -- Probability -- The expansion of the universe -- Poincaré recurrence -- Discrete time. Introduction -- Difference equations -- The action sum -- Caldirola's proper time chronon -- Caldirola's microverse model -- Discrete-time classical electrodynamics -- Time and quanta. Introduction -- Schrödinger versus Heisenberg -- de Broglie waves -- The time-energy uncertainty relation -- The relativistic propagator -- Temporal correlations. Introduction -- Classical bit temporal correlations -- Quantum bit temporal correlations -- The Leggett-Garg correlation -- Understanding the Leggett-Garg prediction -- Time reversal. Introduction -- Classical active time reversal -- Schrödinger wave mechanics -- The time-reversal operator -- The Pauli equation -- The Dirac wave equation -- TCP theorem -- Kaons -- Quantized spacetime. Introduction -- Mach's relationalism -- Einstein's relationalism -- Planck, quanta, photons, and existence -- Snyder's quantized spacetime -- Epilogue. Appendix : Sets -- Groups -- Metric spaces -- Rings and fields -- Vector spaces -- Hilbert space -- Observables -- Antilinear and antiunitary operators -- Affine spaces -- Manifolds -- Signature -- Variational derivation of Einstein's field equations from the Hilbert action -- Doppler shifts. Bibliography -- Index.

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