Abstract

‘‘Time’’, Berlioz wrote, ‘‘is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.’’ Not only has time taught a great many (and killed all), but it has also spawned many great teachers of time—and of space. In fact, thinking about space and time has driven important parts of philosophy since antiquity and continues to be at the forefront of advances in fundamental physics. This has naturally led to many authors attempting to convey either the physics of space and time or their philosophical reflection to the interested non-specialist. Not few of them, however, wreck their ships navigating the narrow passage between oversimplification and inaccessibility. Others navigate this passage successfully, yet focus exclusively on either the physical or the philosophical aspects and often fail to acknowledge— let alone mine—the fruitful interaction between them. In the book under review, Nick Huggett invites us on a journey surveying the land of space, time and motion. What a delight then, when I found that not only does he steer clear of the treacherous shallows of oversimplification and the inscrutable abysses of inaccessibility but that he also masterfully weaves together the philosophical with the physical thread and forcefully shows how they cross-fertilize. This weaving mostly occurs at the end of each chapter when Huggett explains how the material in the corresponding chapter illustrates the fruitful interaction between physics and philosophy and thus offers a lesson worth reminding of also the specialists. The first chapter starts out from the ‘paradox of change’, i.e. the issue of whether or not a thing can change over time yet remain that same one thing that undergoes the change. For there to be change at all, it seems as if a thing must be the same and different: if it were not different, it would not have changed, yet if it were not the same, it would be impossible to say that it is this thing that changed. Apart from a historical excursus on how Aristotle, Descartes and Newton conceived of change and a very brief introduction to spacetime, this chapter offers a powerful and....