Talk:Philosophy of space and time

message: To clarify, here's what I think should happen.
Philosophy and space and time should go away.
Philosophy of space and time should be a short article giving an overview of the major issues within this field - not summarizing any thinkers, just laying out issues and noting who major figures are. A good model would be Continental philosophy or Metaphysics.
Space and time in philosophy should contain much of the content of this article, as well as new content that fully expands the role of these concepts in philosophy.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Phil Sandifer (talk) 17:30, 19 May 2004
To clarify my position
If there really is such a problem with the title, maybe something like Analytic philosophy of space and time or Contemporary philosophy of space and time would be better.
While maybe this article looks like I've gone into too much depth, I guess that's the complaint, rest assured I haven't, and I don't see how I could explain, for example, absolutism v. relationalism without at least one example.
In any case, I don't want to quibble over terminology here, but if this article is unacceptable, then it strikes me that there is no room for actual statements about analytic philosophy on wikipedia, and that is fine if that's how it is wanted.  But it would be inaccurate to describe the article I have written as Space and time in philosophy as this articles would just be one chapter of at least a dozen.  I think it would be great to start such a page, but I am not qualified to write an entry on, e.g., neo-Platonist cosmology.  
In any case, to reiterate, philosophy of space and time is an area of philosophy, I work in that area of philosophy, and what I have written is a summary of major topics in that area of philosophy.  It would be inaccurate to change the name to what it has currently been changed to, or to the second change recommended above.  If the community thinks it would be misleading to the casual reader then I would again recommend adding "analytic" or "contemporary" to the beginning.Spacetimeguy —Preceding undated comment added 18:21, 19 May 2004
:Spacetimeguy -- I am not entirely satisfied by your explanation that "philosophy of space and time" is an actual sub-field of philosophy. If you could cite an entry from a philosophical reference work (here, not necessarily in the arictle) that would satisfy me. Apart from that, you have done a great deal to address my concerns about this article, and if you can find such a citation I will support moving this article back to Philosophy of space and time. (I hope you are not put off Wikipedia by all this -- as you will see for yourself, a lot of people attempt to pass off their own obsessions or theories as devastatingly topics for articles, so those of us who work quality control can be a bit reactionary at times.)  —  Adam Conover † 18:38, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
:: I did a quick google search and most of the hits were either to variants of the philosophy of physics site here, or to course syllabi for classes titled "Philosophy of Space and Time".  I did find [this link] which points to the papers that were presented in the philosophy of space and time at their Pitt's philosophy of science symposium, which I hope would be evidence that such a specialty is recognized.  Spacetimeguy—Preceding undated comment added 18:21, 19 May 2004 
:I agree that this article isn't the complete "Space and time in philosophy" article. Then again, I can't think of a single article in Wikipedia that's complete, so that's not a bad thing. It's a start, and a really helpful start. Other people will add the stuff you're not qualified to write on. It's OK to not be able to write a whole article. Long as there's a lot of people who can all write parts of it, we get a whole article one way or another. :) Snowspinner 18:41, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm agreeing with Spacetimeguy here.  Philosophy of space and time is a subfield of philosophy, albiet a relatively new one - I've read several books on the subject myself, and one of the professors at my school, Michael Philips, has recently published a paper on it, or rather a specific problem within the field.  Neither Space and Time in Philosophy nor Philosophy and Space and Time really refers to the subject as it is today at all, but would suggest a historical overview of different philosophers' approaches to space and time.  Also the article as it stands now does exactly what an article on the philosophy of space and time should do: it gives an overview of various approaches, some proposed solutions to problems, and even has a list of references.  I think it probably should reference Kant, but that's not a criticism at all but an invitation to some other editor to add a new section.  -Seth Mahoney 19:41, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to clarify once again that I do support an article called Philosophy of space and time, however I do not think that all of the content currently in this article is best suited for it - I'm proposing splitting the article into two - not eliminating one, moving one, or anything else like that. Snowspinner 19:44, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Article name

message: This article seems very disjointed. What is the CURRENT status of philosophy of time?  What is the current approach among physists? After reading this article as it currently stands, one does not come away with much of a sense of having been informed about time.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.57.44.38 (talk) 19:13, 22 December 2005‎
:What do mean, "what is the current approach among physicists?"  This article is about philosophy.  While it may be true that physicists tend to unwittingly import philosophy into their views, only a few of these issues are directly touched on.  Moreover, is it proper to add that much text over what view is popular right now?  What if that changes overnight?  Let's stick to the facts. Postmodern Beatnik 23:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: summary?

message: Endurantist philosophy states that an object is present in its entirity across time, and perdurantist philosophy would state that only particular aspects of an object are present at any one time. I'm interested to know if there is a nomenclature for equivelant philosophies in the spacial dimension - ie. contrasting ideas of whether a given object is, indeed, a distinct object with a specific location in space (spacial equivelant of endurantism), or whether that object is actually an apparently distinct aspect of a single, undifferentiated spacial reality (spacial equivelant of perdurantism).
What are the names for these ideas?
Thanks.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.35.26.64 (talk) 00:39, 20 February 2006‎
:I rather like the labels "entension" / "entended" for the spatial analogue of "endurance" / "enduring" and "pertension" / "pertended" for the spatial analogue of "perdurance" / "perduring", and have tried to use them in print when convenient.  You'll also see philosophers referring to entended objects as "extended simples". Josh Parsons 00:11, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  endurantism and perdurantism in space, rather than time... 

message: It is unbelievable that there is zero mention of Buddhist/Daoist/Hindu (and other) Eastern conceptions of space in this article. I am certainly not the one to write them, but without them, this is staunchly Western traditionalist article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.71.50.245 (talk) 17:59, 7 February 2007‎
:Interestingly enough, the debate in the East is quite the same.  Perhaps there could be some mention of what positions Buddhists, Hinduists, and Taoists hold, but I'm not positive that is appropriate. Postmodern Beatnik 23:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This could go under religious views.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.184.14.79 (talk) 19:38, 22 April 2009
The Western Bias (perhaps unintended) extends to ignoring the Jainist conception, shared by Chinese materialist philosophy, where space and time are both infinite.  From this comes the ontological distinction or absolute difference between time, space and matter as independent entities.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.68.73.24 (talk) 08:47, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: western bias

message: I apologize to those who find this tedious, but "Eternalism" and "Presentism" are both traditionally capitalized.  Endurantism and perdurantism, however, traditionally are not.  I have no explanation for why this is, but thus is the history of philosophy of time.  I have altered the page accordingly.  I have also included links to the main pages for these views and spruced up the language under the Eternalism and Presentism headline.  There is a lot of work to be done on this page, however.  I'm putting it on the top of my list, but help is always appreciated. Postmodern Beatnik 23:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  26 May 2007 edits 

message: Apologies up front if I am doing things incorrectly here; that certainly is not my intent.  I am an inexperienced Wikipedia contributor, but I have given many years of thought to the topic of time, and especially to the fundamental nature thereof.  I don't know where else to offer my thoughts on the topic to anyone who might care to know them, so I'll offer them here in the form of a link to a relatively brief essay I've written on the topic.  You will find it here: http://sites.google.com/site/smithjcn/time  Should anyone think these ideas worthwhile, feel free to use the link, the essay, or the ideas contained therein in any reasonable way.  Thank you.
JCNSmith (talk) 12:55, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Another Look at the Fundamental Nature of Time

message: Is this trying to say that physicists have actually done experiments with reversing time in order to prove what is being stated as a fact here? There's no citation for it. I think it should be removed from the article. --Neptunerover (talk) 11:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point, I -tagged the offending statement. I assure you, though, that there are citations for that one, in peer-reviewed literature as well as in physics textbooks and popsci works. IIRC, there have been experimental confirmations of Poincaré recurrence using soundwaves in a cavity containing scattering objects, I'll see what I can dig up. Paradoctor (talk) 12:08, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  the direction of time? 

message: The former term is used, briefly, in the section on the hole argument. However, it is by far the term most commonly used in the literature. Therefore, I suggest "absolutism" be replaced with "substantivalism" throughout the majority of the article. Malreux1 (talk) 21:53, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Substantivalism" versus "Absolutism" 

message: Originally any temporal understandings relied on a cyclic conception: the Greek did not make a difference between a cycle and a circle. Many languages have the same word for weather and time, which hints how the concept devlopped:  time, as we know it, is a rather modern and strong abstraction. I think the archaic view should be outlined and emphasized (see M.Eliade's Eternal Return). And does Newton's definition  preclude time from flowing equably in a circle?91.92.179.172 (talk) 22:05, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cyclic time 

message: Currently there is in the section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_space_and_time#Historical_frameworks the following statement: "Newtonian space and time has absolute position, but not special positions. Galilean space and time has absolute acceleration, but not absolute position or velocity." Its my understanding that Newton understood and worked within the paradigm of the classical space and time of Galilean relativity, in other words Newton's space was Galilean, yet these incompatible statements are clearly contrary to this. The absoluteness of space that Newton referred might have been a preferred reference frame, but more generally speaking, for him to be successful during his career, his work was definitely in agreement with Galilean relativity for which spacial distances are invariant (thus absolute in this sense). The idea that Galilean relativity implies that spacial positions or distances between objects are not invariant and vary with the reference frame is incorrect and should go (or be attributed to a reliable source). Furthermore, I just took a look at our article on Galilean invariance to see if I've misunderstood their views, and this article supports my understanding of them. -Modocc (talk) 15:39, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newtonian space and time is also Galilean 

message: The article didn't exist when i started editing WP, i doubt i ever contributed to either it or this talk page, and i probably never previously consulted it. In short, i'm start editing, from scratch, and that makes it a good time to make it practical to read the discussion page sections in the order they were created, and each section in the standard tree-traversal order: in trying to describe that, it seems to me depth-first traversal from the root is the proper terminology. In any case, it's too frustrating to execute when previous discussants have not adhered to the tree-building algorithm that supports it, so that my first two tasks are retrofitting sig/date info where omitted, and moving the misplaced contribs. If that upsets you in any way, please ping me at least and (if convenient) start, on my talk page, your effort to dissuade me. (There's no time like the present, so i'm proceeding for now.)--Jerzy•t 19:01, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: OK sigs & misplaced contribs are dealt with. I guess i gotta go read the article.--Jerzy•t 02:54, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganization of discussion into canonical order 

message: Had 4 then (1/2010) and eleven now, but no clear call on delete or update the tag, so left as is. Apparent statement of the reverse of the normal connotation of materialism/realism vs idealism. 98.4.124.117 (talk) 12:53, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The counterfactual reading was a misread on my part. 98.4.124.117 (talk) 21:19, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Finding no other defect, after reading lightly in its entirety (imo it's just local seriality of events, essentially I presume Kantian and conventionalist although haven't looked sufficiently at the latter), and also the tagged for lack of support and insupportable reification of it  as an ether anyway, not in fact supported after a couple of years, updated that tag. 98.4.124.117 (talk) 21:57, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Counterfactual and tagging