In the past decade the philosophy of time seems to have experienced a renaissance across all of its various sub-fields. With this activity in mind, the Royal Institute of Philosophy agreed to let me organize its annual conference around the title, Time, Reality and Experience. Held at the London School of Economics on 27-8 Sept 2000, the conference brought together philosophers and scientists interested in time from all over the world. The conference was truly international, with speakers coming from nine different countries across three different continents. In many cases, prominent philosophers of time met each other for the first time. The conference was also wide-ranging in terms of its approach to philosophy of time, balanced between studies of time as it is found in science and more traditional analytic philosophy of time. In all, I felt it a great success.

The London conference was a cause of this book, but it was not the source of all that is in it. Professor Anthony O'Hear of the Royal Institute charged me with producing a good collection in philosophy of time, regardless of the origin of the papers. To round out the volume, I then searched for more good unpublished papers in philosophy of time—and found them. I heard two at a wonderful conference (Real Time and its Quantum Roots, 12–14 April, 2001) organized by Richard Healey and held at the University of Arizona.