On the reality of becoming
pp. 345-353
in: Fraser, Francis C. Haber, Gert H. Müller (eds), The study of time, Berlin, Springer, 1972Abstract
The paper discusses the concept of the present moment "now'. Two views regarding the nature of the "now', held by A. Grünbaum and G. J. Whitrow, resp., are contrasted in Part I. Grünbaum believes that the becoming of the present moment is totally subjective and observer-dependent, while Whitrow thinks that it has objective reality and that the moment "now' is uniquely the same for the whole universe and marks a, qualitative change between the actuality of the past and the potentiality of the future.In Part II the question is raised — and rejected — whether the discrepancy is only a linguistic one. Both views are criticised, the first for its extreme subjectivism, the other for deriving ontological consequences from the accidental positioning of an observer. Part III attempts a dissolution of the disagreement by showing that the dichotomy derives from the notion of a static world, to which time is added as an extra dimension, while it does not arise from an Einsteinian-type description of the universe as dynamic.
