Abstract

In the literature on the compatibility between the time of our experience and the time of physics, the special theory of relativity has enjoyed central stage. By bringing into the discussion the general theory of relativity, I suggest a new analysis of the misunderstood notion of becoming, developed from hints in Gödel's published and unpublished arguments for the ideality of time. I claim that recent endorsements of such arguments, based on Gödel's own ‘rotating’ solution to Einstein's field equation, fail: once understood in the right way, becoming can be shown to be both mind-independent and compatible with spacetime physics. Being a needed tertium quid between views of time traditionally regarded as in conflict, such a new approach to becoming should also help to dissolve a crucial aspect of the century-old debate between the so-called A and B theories of time.

Introduction: the shift from STR to GTR and the centrality of becoming

In the literature on the relationship between the time of our experience and the time of physics, the special theory of relativity (STR) has curiously but undoubtedly played a major role. On the assumptions that

1. (i) becoming (the ‘flow of time’) is the essential feature of experienced time;

2. (ii) objective (i.e. mind-independent) becoming presupposes an ontological difference between present and future events or state of affairs;

3. (iii) the geometrical structure presupposed by STR is a necessary constraint that physical time in general must meet,

a solution to the problem of the definability of becoming in Minkowski spacetime has also been regarded as the main way to solve the question of the compatibility between the time of physics and the time of our experience.