Tim Maudlin Quotes

[S]pace and time... do not appear to our senses: they have no color or flavor or sound or smell or tangible shape. ...[They] seem rather to have is a geometrical structure.

If one resolves the measurement problem by postulating additional variables beside the wave function, it is the dynamics of these variables which manifests the non-locality and which resists a fully Relativistic formulation.

[T]he need for a completely physical account of "measurement" procedures—are addressed in both volumes...

The scientific realist maintains that in at least some cases, we have good evidential reasons to accept theories or theoretical claims as true, or approximately true, or on-the-road-to-truth. The scientific antirealist denies this. These attitudes come in degrees... [T]his is a question addressed by epistemology and confirmation theory...

The regrettably widespread opinion that there is no real non-locality inherent in the quantum theory is therefore deeply intertwined with the regrettably widespread opinion that the measurement problem can be painlessly solved without postulating either additional variables or any real collapse process.

I believe that it is a fundamental, irreducible fact about the spatio-temporal structure of the world that time passes. ...The passage of time is an intrinsic asymmetry in the temporal structure of the world, an asymmetry that has no spatial counterpart. ...The belief that time passes ...has no bearing on the question of the 'reality' of the past or of the future. I believe that the past is real: there are facts about what happened in the past that are independent of the present state of the world and independent of all knowledge or beliefs about the past. I similarly believe that there is (i.e. will be) a single unique future. I know what it would be to believe that the past is unreal (i.e. nothing ever happened, everything was just created ex nihilo) and to believe that the future is unreal (i.e. all will end, I will not exist tomorrow, I have no future). I do not believe these things... Insofar as belief in the reality of the past and the future constitutes a belief in a 'block universe', I believe in a block universe. But I also believe that time passes, and see no contradiction or tension between these views.

[P]hysical theories are neither realist nor antirealist. That is... a . It is a person's attitude toward a physical theory that is either realist or antirealist. ...[T]he theory toward which Osiander was antirealist and Galileo realist is one and the same theory. The theory itself is neither.

[A]nother interpretation holds that Relativity requires only thatTheories be Lorentz invarient.

Quantum theory... formalism... uses no more than linear algebra and vector spaces. ...A particularly nice and accessible presentation of the requisite mathematics can be found in 's Quantum Mechanics and Experience (1992, Ch. 2).

Physics aspires to a sort of universality that is unique among empirical sciences and holds, in that sense, a foundational position among them.

Newton's First Law, the... Law of Inertia, refers only to bodies that are subject to no external forces. It is tempting to say that Newton postulates that such bodies "continue in the same state of motion," but such... would miss the revolutionary aspect... the First Law specifies exactly what counts as "the same state of motion." For Aristotle... a piece of aether in uniform circular motion about [earth,] the center of the universe is always in "the same state of motion," and so there would be no reason to seek out external causes... In Aristotle's physics, external causes are responsible for unnatural motion, such as a rock moving upward instead of down. So for Aristotle, the falling of a stone... requires no external cause, and the continued rotation of a sphere of fixed stars requires no external cause: this what these sorts of matter do by nature.

[T]he science of thermodynamics... initially aimed at providing a precise account of how heat spreads through an object and from one object to another. But we can discover... detailed equations governing heat flow and still not have an account of what heat is. ...It is a characteristic of contemporary physics education that much more time is spent learning how to solve the equation and get a practical answer... than in... the nature of heat, or the nature of space and time, or the nature of matter. Physics students... fascinated by these foundational questions can find themselves frustrated by... classes that refuse to address them. This volume is dedicated to them as much as it is to philosophers...

The Theory of Relativity has overthrown classical presumptions about the structure of space and time. The quantum theory has provided us with intimations of a new conception of physical reality. Classical notions of causality, of actuality, and of the role of the observer... have all come under attack.

A physical theory should clearly and forthrightly address two... questions: what there is, and what it does. The answer to the first... the ontology... to the second... its dynamics. The ontology should have a sharp mathematical description, and the dynamics... implemented by precise equations describing how the ontology... evolve[s]. ...All three of the theories we will examine meet these demands.

[T]he most general question we can ask about matter is what sort of thing it is. ...[W]e might hold that matter is made of point-like particles, or of fields, or of one-dimensional strings, or of some combination of these, or of something else altogether. Given any of these ...there are further, more specific questions ...We will be concerned with the most general questions, rather than the more specific ones.