Plattner's Arrow: Science and Multi‐Dimensional Time

Ratio 13 (3):256–274 (2000)
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Abstract

Might time be multi‐dimensional? In exploring this question, this paper uses a thought‐experiment about dimensionality, H. G. Wells' ‘The Plattner Story’. Plattner has his left and right sides transposed after a trip through a fourth spatial dimension, a change with independent empirical consequences. This example is then generalised to reversals of the directions of time and entropy. Finally, this thought‐experiment is related to relativistic theories of time and the possibility of preserving causality in a temporally multi‐dimensional framework.

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Alasdair Richmond
University of Edinburgh

Citations of this work

Exterminous Hypertime.Nikk Effingham - 2021 - Philosophies 6 (4):85.
Back to the Unchanging Past.Sam Baron - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (1):129-147.
Time Travel.Nikk Effingham - 2026 - In Nina Emery, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time. Routledge. pp. 270-279.

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References found in this work

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The chemistry of space.Robin Le Poidevin - 1994 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72 (1):77 – 88.
S.René Métrich & Eugène Faucher - 2009 - In René Métrich & Eugène Faucher, Wörterbuch deutscher Partikeln: Unter Berücksichtigung ihrer französischen Äquivalente. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. pp. 730-838.

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