http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html
"General relativity knits together space, time and gravity. Confounding all common sense, how time passes in Einstein's universe depends on what you are doing and where you are. Clocks run faster when the pull of gravity is weaker, so if you live up a skyscraper you age ever so slightly faster than you would if you lived on the ground floor, where Earth's gravitational tug is stronger. "General relativity completely changed our understanding of time," says Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France.....It is still not clear who is right, says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."
http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/index_files/physics%20against%20tense.doc
Craig Callender: "In my opinion, by far the best way for the tenser to respond to Putnam et al is to adopt the Lorentz 1915 interpretation of time dilation and Fitzgerald contraction. Lorentz attributed these effects (and hence the famous null results regarding an aether) to the Lorentz invariance of the dynamical laws governing matter and radiation, not to spacetime structure. On this view, Lorentz invariance is not a spacetime symmetry but a dynamical symmetry, and the special relativistic effects of dilation and contraction are not purely kinematical. The background spacetime is Newtonian or neo-Newtonian, not Minkowskian. Both Newtonian and neo-Newtonian spacetime include a global absolute simultaneity among their invariant structures (with Newtonian spacetime singling out one of neo-Newtonian spacetimes many preferred inertial frames as the rest frame). On this picture, there is no relativity of simultaneity and spacetime is uniquely decomposable into space and time."
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/35992/title/It%E2%80%99s_Likely_That_Times_Are_Changing
"A century ago, mathematician Hermann Minkowski famously merged space with time, establishing a new foundation for physics; today physicists are rethinking how the two should fit together....Einsteins belief that time is illusory did not stem from a mere devotion to Newtonian determinism. After all, he had disregarded Newton before, rewriting the laws of motion that underpinned deterministic philosophy in the first place. In so doing, Einstein introduced a new notion of time, more radical than even he at first realized. In fact, the view of time that Einstein adopted was first articulated by his onetime math teacher in a famous lecture delivered one century ago. That lecture, by the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, established a new arena for the presentation of physics, a new vision of the nature of reality redefining the mathematics of existence. The lecture was titled Space and Time, and it introduced to the world the marriage of the two, now known as spacetime. It was a good marriage, but lately physicists passion for spacetime has begun to diminish. And some are starting to whisper about possible grounds for divorce."
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001661/
MINKOWSKI SPACE-TIME: A GLORIOUS NON-ENTITY
Harvey R. Brown, Oliver Pooley
"It is argued that Minkowski space-time cannot serve as the deep structure within a "constructive" version of the special theory of relativity, contrary to widespread opinion in the philosophical community."
http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Simultaneity-Routledge-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/0415701740
Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) "Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity is an anthology of original essays by an international team of leading philosophers and physicists who, on the centenary of Albert Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity, come together in this volume to reassess the contemporary paradigm of the relativistic concept of time. A great deal has changed since 1905 when Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity, and this book offers a fresh reassessment of Special Relativitys relativistic concept of time in terms of epistemology, metaphysics and physics. There is no other book like this available; hence philosophers and scientists across the world will welcome its publication."
Perhaps, instead of "PHILOSOPHERS DEVELOP THE CONCEPT OF TIME", I should have used the title "REMARKABLE BIRD, RELATIVITY! BEAUTIFUL PLUMAGE!":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218
Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue...What's, uh...What's wrong with it?
Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
Owner: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Owner: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com