GöDel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the GöDel Universe [Book Review]

Philosophical Review 111 (1):148-152 (2002)
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Abstract

In 1949, Kurt Gödel found a solution to the field equations of general relativity that described a spacetime with some unusual properties. This “Gödel universe” permitted “closed timelike curves,” hence a kind of time travel, and it did not admit of decomposition into successive moments of time. In the same year, he published “A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy”, in which he used certain properties of this solution to argue for a kind of temporal idealism, whereby “change [is] an illusion or an appearance due to our special mode of perception”. The paper is short and to the point, but the argument has usually been regarded as fatally flawed. In his Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe, Palle Yourgrau makes a case for Gödel.

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Steve Weinstein
University of Waterloo

Citations of this work

Where in the relativistic world are we?Cody Gilmore - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):199–236.
Dust, Time and Symmetry.Gordon Belot - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (2):255-291.
Becoming inflated.Craig Bourne - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1):107-119.
Gödel, Kant, and the Path of a Science.Srećko Kovač - 2008 - Inquiry: Journal of Philosophy 51 (2):147-169.

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References found in this work

Time, Tense and Causation.Quentin Smith & Michael Tooley - 1999 - Philosophical Review 108 (1):123.
How to teach special relativity.John S. Bell - 1976 - Progress in Scientific Culture 1.

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